Wouldn\u2019t it be easy to balance work and life if there wasn\u2019t all that dang work to do?\u00a0 Unfortunately for the majority of us, we spend most of our waking hours working.\u00a0 Whether you are in the office or working from home, you have to balance the amount of time you spend working and time you spend decompressing.\u00a0 I think everyone struggles with finding the right balance, and their certainly isn\u2019t a shortage of literature on the subject.\u00a0 The problem is that there are a lot of poor suggestions on the topic.<\/p>\n
Nigel Marsh, a CEO and Author, said in a TED talk on the subject, \u201cAll the discussions about flexi-time or dress-down Fridays or paternity leave only serve to mask the core issue, which is that certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family.\u201d<\/p>\n
He strikes a powerful note here.\u00a0 If you ask 100 employers what they do to help employees with work-life balance, I guarantee half of them don\u2019t even have an answer.\u00a0 The majority of the rest probably have things like flex time, or have crazy hat Wednesday\u2019s, but that doesn\u2019t really solve the core issue.<\/p>\n
Nigel goes on to say that, \u201cThere are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don\u2019t need, to impress people they don\u2019t like.\u00a0 It\u2019s my contention that going to work on Friday in jeans and a t-shirt isn\u2019t getting to the nub of the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what are we to do in this situation?\u00a0 The first step is to be aware of the situation.\u00a0 Do you have a good work-life balance?\u00a0 Do you spend enough time at home with the kids and family?\u00a0 Being aware is the first part of solving any problem.<\/p>\n
Next you have to take control.\u00a0 Your employer, whether it is a corporation, a government office, or a mom and pop shop, will balance your life for you, but may not do it in a way that you agree.\u00a0 You have to design your life the way you want it.\u00a0 Don\u2019t put your life in the hands of a company, it is your decision how to run your life.<\/p>\n
The third step is to give yourself enough time to reach your balance goals.\u00a0 Don\u2019t expect change to happen overnight.\u00a0 On the other side of the coin, don\u2019t wait too long.\u00a0 Falling into the trap of \u201cI\u2019ll relax when I retire\u201d is the last thing you want.\u00a0 Set goals and give a few months for changes to start happening.<\/p>\n
In the words of Nigel Marsh, \u201capproach balance in a balanced way.\u201d\u00a0 Make sure when planning for work-life balance that you set aside time for each section of your life.\u00a0 Work, family, fitness, spiritual, or whatever is important to you.\u00a0 Finding what things matter to you in life, and making time for them, is the most important thing you will ever do.\u00a0 You won\u2019t just be a smarter worker, but a smarter person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wouldn\u2019t it be easy to balance work and life if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[460,461],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}