Hot Take: "Work-Life Balance" Is Ruining Your Life

I know...I said it in the title.

Now that I have your attention, we can put the torches and pitchforks down so you can hear me out. As you may have gathered through this blog, I think words are powerful. They carry more energy and influence than we may realize. Phrases like this can connote several different meanings depending on the beholder. I believe phrases like this can subconsciously degrade what a positive relationship with "life" and "work" feels like. Let's dive in.

Origin

The concept of work-life balance came about around the 1940's. This is the time when the US began to track average hours worked, which totaled up to an average of more than 100 hours a week for some laborers! From there, they noticed health and safety risks begin to climb, amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to adopt the 40-hour work week. The intention was to give workers more flexibility and freedom to tend to things like housekeeping, family raising, recovery, etc.

The Issues

The intention behind the phrase is one that I'm very much aligned with. We should be mindful of nurturing all aspects of our life to ensure we achieve maximal levels of fulfillment and impact. This issue that exists with the phrase is multi-layered and can subconsciously deteriorate the relationship with our work and ultimately our overall joy. See the top three issues classified below:

Issue #1: Work is separate from Life

The phrase "work life balance" strongly connotes that one must balance work with life. To balance is to offset the weight of two opposing forces, suggesting that work is an opposing force to our lives. Unfortunately, most working class humans may agree with this perceived truth. Imagine this concept put on other parts of our lives such as "marriage-life balance, health-life balance, spirituality-life balance". Most of us would agree to a more is better approach with these facets, in favor of being unbalanced essentially.

Issue #2: Work is only a means to an unrelated end

Too often does society deem work as a "have to do" vs. a "get to do" type of chore. We get up, go to work in order to pay our bills, fund the weekends, the annual vacation and hopefully save enough to retire and not work...to then complain that we're bored and have nothing to do (I may be getting off track). What if the work we did was more than that? Could our work pull the future to the present by being used as an outlet to live life through? Far too often do we find "jobs" or "careers" that we feel pre-programmed to select without questioning how it's tied to our ultimate life-plan in an anabolic way.

Issue #3: Be selfish more than you're selfless

This is the part where I break down "that's not my job" or "I don't get paid for that" statements we hear all the time in traditional workplaces. The "balance" part of the phrase supports the notion of avoiding to be as helpful as you're capable of due to the threat of becoming unbalanced. I think we are inundated with messages of being careful to not over-extend ourselves, set boundaries, etc in the workplace...and life for that matter. What about under-extending ourselves? How dangerous can that be for the self, others and the organization? Rarely does anyone set boundaries around overextending themselves to help their children, spouse, or develop as a human being. Again, we tend to adopt this "more is better" mentality to a certain extent when reframing the conversation that way. Helping others is one of the number one activities that will release the feel-good chemicals, oxytocin, dopamine and endorphins. (Post, S. G. 2005).

Going from "Work-Life Balance" to "Life Harmony"

The fundamental nugget I'm trying to pass along here is to question the relationship you have with your work (and life for that matter). Is it possible to redefine our relationship with work to one that positively supports how we want to live (not just financially), is connected with our goals and allows us to be more selfless in a way that energizes us vs. drains.

Work is a constituent of Life, much like health, spirituality, relationships, hobbies, etc. In order to achieve the greatest levels of fulfillment, it shouldn't be exiled into a space of its own. The average person will spend 86,000 hours (43 years) working throughout their lifetime. Make every one of those hours as impactful and fulfilling as possible. Settle for nothing less.