Work life balance – what they don’t tell you

For too long you've been told that getting a better work-life is easy. They lied.
04th September 2024

Work-life balance.

A very emotional three words. Used by the popular press, your colleagues, your friends. Typically, in a negative way – “I don’t have enough work-life balance!”.

Which is understandable given that technology, and other factors, now enable us to work from anywhere, anytime, on multiple devices.

What does work-life mean?

The formal definition simply describes the division of one’s time and focus between working and non-working activities.

The problem of course is that what we really mean is that want to spend more time on non-work activities.

But let’s be clear.

There is no right or wrong work-life balance. Your work-life balance is different to my work-life balance. And your work-live balance can change, sometimes week to week, sometimes at different stages in your life and career.

So if we want to have a ‘better’ work-life balance i.e. less work, we need to recognise that you’re actually talking about control. Control over your life and how you spend it. Control over your ability to be flexible, to be able to change your schedule when you need to.

And control implies that that you have:

The knowledge and mindset to do things differently (how will change happen otherwise)
The ability to dictate your schedule (which is often limited by other people)
The skills and willingness to make difficult decisions and to compromise (saying “no” is not easy)
A clear understanding of what you’d like to do differently (otherwise you’ll simply go back to doing what you have always done)
The passion to change your own behaviours (as changing behaviours can be tough)

Companies have made a fortunate over the years selling time management courses and techniques.

But that’s the easy bit.

If you want to have greater control over your work-life schedule, you need to change. You need a change of mindset.

And that’s not easy.

If you want talk about taking control of your life, contact me.