Life-Work Balance

Why do we call it a “Work-Life Balance” vs. “Life-Work Balance” … putting your personal life first? On average, we spend 11 hours per day on a job — commuting, working, problem-solving, agonizing — and only 6 hours per day awake on our personal life. Calculating in this manner, it’s almost 2:1 “Work-Life,” in turn, I’m advocating to switch the ratio towards personal life.

Research

According to the Associated Asia Research Foundation “Work-Life Balance” is the “harmonious and holistic integration of work and non-work of work and private life. There are various aspects of one’s personal life that can intersect with work including family, career, leisure, and health.” In a study of Fortune 500 firm’s public announcements of work-family human resource initiatives, these drove $60 million in shareholder value per initiative. It turns out that  personal time is beneficial to you and the corporate bottom line. Win-win. If only everyone saw it this way, haven’t you experienced the boss who made you feel guilty for taking a vacation or leaving early for a family activity? I have.

New Life Priorities

Within the past 3 years I’ve experienced major changes from early retirement, my mother’s death, living abroad for 6 months, and starting a consulting practice. Along the way after soul searching, I’ve made a major shift in my life priorities. I was chatting with my best friend Linda this week and told her I approach each day with the following priorities in order of importance:

• Health
• Fun
• Clients 

Upon reflection personal relationships should have come in second. My husband is my rock and my friendships bring great joy into my life. Sometimes I overlook the obvious as in this case. When I worked within corporate America the focus was quite different:

• Work
• Work (not a repeat typo)
• Fun
• Personal relationships
• Exercise

Quite a different dynamic, so why on earth was work so important? Because it was my identity, independence, and self-absorbed value. How silly. How many people from your career or former job are still in your life? Those bosses you work so hard for and colleagues that you collaborated with in the end don’t care when you exit your current job. They care rightly about their own life. Don’t get me wrong, I have great friends from my former jobs. My advice is to be kind to your significant other and friends since they will be there after that job and are what truly matters in the long run. 

Making A Change

Thank you for hanging out with me on this story. Here’s what I believe makes for a Life-Work Balance: The secret is scheduling your personal life like your work life by simply making time for your health, relationships, passions, and learning.

• Health: Make a personal commitment to work out weekly and go to the doctor or dentist. And schedule it on your calendar. Hate exercising? Go golfing, paddle boarding or take up salsa dancing. It’s all in being active. It lowers your blood pressure and takes your mind off of business. As my husband calls it the reset button. You are switching your focus to a personal need which, in turn, will help your work performance.
• Relationships: Build a network of friends. My best friend Linda was a vendor of mine over 20 years ago. We haven’t lived in the same city for years, but still talk on the phone and go on vacation together. Last year we celebrated her husband’s birthday in St. Martin and it was an incredible experience. What’s amazing to me is my friend circle continues to evolve at different stages in my life. Fifteen people I socialize with now I only met 5 years ago and we schedule weekly activities from rooftop condo meals, baseball games, museum outings, and volunteer events.
• Passions: Whether it’s a sport activity like paddle boarding (mine), daily workouts (mine), or career consulting (mine), I’m all in and focused. While I’ve had many jobs within my varied career path, now I actually do what I enjoy on a daily basis, and it makes me content. It took awhile to get here, but is well worth the journey. I now remind myself daily what’s important. 
• Learning: I’m the guinea pig for new experiences; consequently, Linda and I have attempted 3 flavors of yoga — hot, aerial, and goat. I’m not making this up. The goat yoga had us in stitches and literal goat poop. My husband came to watch and truly enjoyed hanging out with the friendly goats. We still talk about it and truthfully, there wasn’t a real attempt at yoga. Who cares, it was plain fun. I’m taking Spanish at City University in Seattle to prepare for my upcoming 1 month stay in Malaga, Spain even though I studied Spanish for 7 years in my early education. This class engages my brain to speak more eloquently and confidently. Plus, I’ve met an interesting new group of people who are all at least 15 years younger than me that bring different perspectives.
• Giving Back: Over dinner, I asked my husband how he achieved Life-Work Balance and he said it was by volunteering plus being the captain of his tennis league. Volunteering for Junior Achievement while he was an engineering executive in Atlanta gave him the opportunity to give back to the community for what he received growing up in Brooklyn. For those of you unfamiliar, Junior Achievement is the world’s largest organization dedicated to educating students in grades K-12 about entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs. For play time and competition, his tennis was a scheduled twice weekly. In either case, he mentioned you reset your brain by doing activities outside of work. I agree; therefore, I volunteer as a career advocate at Dress for Success and serve on my condo’s HOA committees. By giving, you receive and you feel better. It’s not all about work.

Do you have any stories about Life-Work Balance? I’m a work in progress, are you? Here’s to landing your next career adventure or retirement because you deserve it.