The phrase “work-life balance” invokes the image of work on one hand and life on the other hand, and these hands are moving up and down weighing up one against the other. “Work” is supposed to invoke professional attitudes, meetings, importance, deadlines, phone calls, bringing home the bacon. “Life” is often a more confusing array of time for one’s self, one’s family, making sure dinner is on the table, attending school plays and not forgetting your spouse’s birthday.
Balance means this or that, balance means toppling heights of paperwork on one scale and emotional baggage on the other. Balance is like a yoga tree pose, it demands more than many of us can give. Achieving balance is a struggle, maintaining it is tricky.
But it need not be so. I am one person, at work and in life, and my life includes my work and my work sustains my life. Without work I am nobody, without life I am dead. With this view, balance is impossible, work and life cannot be balanced, but they can be integrated.
Once the concept of work-life integration came to me, I found it much easier to cope and to plan my week. It is a perception of how we classify our actions, making it an integration mindset. The integration mindset made it OK to go to the gym without feeling guilty that I wasn’t working on that report. It allowed me to join the children on the homework table (aka dining table) after school and I would do emails while they did their maths or english. I joined another social group and looked at it as a networking opportunity that might yield colleagues as well as friends. Maybe some of you already do this, you’re ahead of the game and already have an integration mindset.
Working mothers are often those who juggle the most, who try to balance more plates than is humanly possible for most other people. This merits a separate post, coming soon.
The point here is that there are subtle changes to the way we think about things that help us recognize how we are integrating work and life. Many of us already have lunch with colleagues or friends who work nearby, but this too is a work-life integration point. Recognizing it as such made me enjoy it more. There is usually something about your job that you enjoy, at least a bit. Actually being aware that you enjoy this bit of your work makes you happier, more at ease with the bits you might not enjoy as much. This too is an integration mindset, consciously integrating pleasurable activities within your working day is a work-life integration hack.
So let’s stop trying to achieve balance, it’s not a question of either/or, work or life, life or death. It’s as integrated as the one person that you are, and having an integration mindset approach to your whole life is what we should be aiming for.
photo by SKhuri | cold peace | Vevey, CH