The phrase work-life balance is misleading. I like the phrase work-life harmony.
– Jeff Bezos
There is no such thing as work-life balance – it is all life. The balance has to be within you.
– Sadhguru
There are more to life beyond our job – such as family, friends, our hobbies, travel, and so many other things we want to do. Yet we all know what it’s like to be stuck and feeling overwhelmed at work, to the point where most of us could not see the world beyond our job.
The thing is, we spend over 70% of our time a week at work, and some even thinking about work all the time, making it a huge chunk of our lives. In other words, there is no such a thing as work-life balance – work is mostly your life and life is mostly your work. Fortunately, what we can manage is ourselves. Here are 2 key ways to get started :-
Key questions to ask ourselves :-
- Does the work energises me (or depletes me)?
- Is it possible to find deeper meaning or reward from the job without feeling overwhelmed by the job itself?
- Does the job make me happy and satisfied 80% of the time?
- Is this job the only option to make a living (have I been looking out at other options)?
- Is there an opportunity to create something truly worthwhile for myself and everyone around me from this current job?
- Is the level of responsibility I have at this job enough to make me feel that I contribute significantly?
If the answers are “No” for most of the questions above, it is time to re-assess if you want to continue investing your limited time and energy at a work you do not enjoy or don’t see a purpose now and in the long-term. It is never too late to fix it and pivot to a direction which you will find more meaningful and one that energises you.
If your answers are 50-50 or “Yes” for most of the questions above, start mastering the art of working smarter. Learn to guard your time and energy better which maximises your productivity, so that you get more time back to enjoy the weekends or do things you truly enjoy.
Working joyfully vs working hard
If we do things joyfully, it feels like we haven’t done anything at all and work becomes easy and happy. Learn to do work or whatever you have chosen to do in life with ease and full of involvement. Here are some tips to increase your level of working more joyfully :-
- Leave ego at the door
- The very nature of the ego is that it wants to do everything hard because its only concern is to be better than everyone else. The danger when the whole effort is comparison or to beat competition, we will never get to truly enjoy our full expression of growth journey and end up feeling more stressed and overwhelmed.
- Get the best out of people
- Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” For work to be done more successfully and efficiently, we must get people to enjoy working with us. To get people to enjoy working with us, we must love them first, irrespective of how they are. Only when people love us or enjoy working with us, will they do their best for us.
- Learn the art of volunteering
- To volunteer means to do a job willingly, regardless of the reward. We help because we want to, and it feeds our internal satisfaction and it’s an instant feel good factor. So it is true that if we do the job willingly, we will do the job more joyfully vs if we do the job unwillingly.
In the end, the underlying purpose of the work we do everyday is to use our skills and abilities to leave a positive impact in peoples’ lives and make this world a little better place to live in. So, strive for work-life harmony – concentrate on work that is in front of us and yet not become so immersed as to lose sight of your higher objective ie. missing important family gathering.
Hope this helps give some new perspectives.
