I’ve been wondering lately if life-balance is a myth.
As a set of empirical observations, I heard a lot about life balance as a manager in small and larger tech companies. I met very few people in those organizations, if any, who would actually say that they had a balanced life. As a manager, I was often stunned at how much the people working for me had going on outside of work; between kids, aging parents, health issues, financial problems, divorces, and other unplanned life crises it was a miracle that we got anything done.
The organizations that I worked in often spoke of life balance, but it was a hard promise to deliver on. This had something to do with the work culture, which often favored war stories about how many hours people worked to get near-impossible things done. Sometimes, the survival of the organization simply took precedence over life balance.
The Buddhists advise us that pain is part of life, but suffering is optional. Much suffering is caused by desires and expectations that are not met. Which leads me to wonder if life balance is even the right expectation for many of us, since the lack of it seems to result in so much suffering.
Of course, when I ponder the life balance question, I’m not just thinking about all the people that I worked with. I am also thinking about myself. Over the course of my full-time work career, the job demands got more-and-more intense and time-consuming. I don’t blame this on anyone, and I am no one’s victim. I freely and willingly chose to do every job that I ever had, worked hard enough, learned a great deal, met many fantastic people, and got paid well enough.
But not only did my work demands increase as my career evolved and progressed, but so did demands from other parts of my life – in the form of aging parents, a sister with a serious illness, various financial obligations, and the need to pay attention to my own health as I got older. And, of course, it’s not just me. Just about everyone I know working such jobs in their thirties and forties and fifties feels these same kinds of pressures, even if the particular stories differ.
I don’t believe I am alone in wondering if life balance, in the way in which it is conventionally thought of, is possible. In a 2013 study, Pew Research found that, “Mothers and fathers feel equally pressured these days when it comes to managing their time between work and family. Among those with children under age 18, half of working fathers and 56% of working mothers say that balancing the responsibilities of their job with the responsibilities of their family is very or somewhat difficult.” Pew Research Balancing Work & Family As a manager, I found that working mothers were especially challenged by life balance demands, which is not surprising given that much research indicates that women still bear the primary burden of household chores even in dual-working families.
I have more questions than answers about how to deal with the desire for life balance. The frequency of this topic in the workplace suggests to me that the questions are worth pondering.
Stages of Life Balance
At the risk of stating the obvious, the demands and important milestones in our life naturally change as we go through life.
I am not sure I would advise someone in their twenties, at least someone seeking a professional career, to focus much on life balance. Organizations typically expect their newer employees to work long hours. I’m not in my twenties but from my vantage point, the career tracks for young professionals have gotten much more rather than less competitive over the last twenty or thirty years. The twenties seem like a great time to experiment with alternative jobs, but also to work hard and advance your career. And if you really love your job, as long as you are taking care of your health, life-balance may not be all that important to you.
Nor does life balance seem all that easy to achieve in mid-career. Frequently, work offers more opportunities and responsibilities at the same time that we are starting families. As the children grow up, at least for some time there seems to be more rather than less demands. According to Pew Research, 47 percent of adults in their 40s and 50s have both a parent aged 65 or older and at least one child that they are financially supporting. Then there is college to fund, the costs of which are unfathomable to me especially when I compare them to what I paid for myself to go to decent universities. No wonder there are so many stress-induced diseases.
The silver lining in this cloud is that with more responsibilities you can sometimes gain more flexibility in how your structure your work life. Especially with more people working more hours at home and fewer demands to be in the office every day, there is the chance to still make it to your kid’s soccer game and get your work done anyway. This is the kind of benefit which, when mutual trust is present, costs the organization nothing and can be highly valued by employees.
Objectively speaking, I experienced more time demands as my career progressed. But I also had more flexibility and control over how I could structure my work life, especially when I left the corporate world and worked for smaller companies. I believe this reduced my “life balance stress” even when I was really busy. I am now in my early sixties, and a few years ago I stopped working full-time – now, I get to choose how much free time that I have, since I work for myself.
I wonder – should we think about life-balance as something that we need to have throughout our life, or is it better to accept that different stages of life will yield different life balance equations? Is it better to seek balance over the arc of our life?
Rituals & Life Habits
While the demands on my time accelerated and intensified over the course of my full-time career, I think I got better at dealing with this fact – necessity being the mother of invention.
In my twenties and early thirties, I was particularly terrible at balancing the demands of life. It wasn’t really so much about how many hours I was working, although I worked plenty, it was about something more pernicious. Whenever I left work physically, I still thought about it all the time. Which, effectively, meant that I didn’t really leave work. This was notable to those closest to me, for example, my wife, who wasn’t shy about pointing this out.
What I really got better at was creating rituals and habits that enabled me to mentally disconnect from my work. These were simple things that were easily accessible nearly every day. Going to the coffee shop in the morning and reading the newspaper. Going to the yogurt shop at night, even in the middle winter. Using my airplane time to read whatever it was I wanted to read, rather than trying to get work done in the middle seat. Going for a long run, which I realize is not everyone’s favorite habit – but, then again, it’s really hard to be in a bad mood after a long run.
I’m not saying any of this was rocket science and I would observe that many people seem to need fewer rituals than I did. What I am saying is that, personally, these rituals were a very powerful cumulative force in my life. They enabled me to take on larger and larger jobs at work, even to get used to being extremely busy, and stay relatively sane. They enabled me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even during those times when it was hard to tell where if anywhere it was all going. They enabled me to observe my work environment, as opposed to being a victim of it.
Life seems more balanced to me when we can find our own set of daily rituals, or weekly rituals, that keep us grounded and connect us to the people and things that we love.
Career Transitions and Breaks
I don’t know very many people, just a few investment bankers, who retired in their 50s or sooner. And they had to be investment bankers to get there. Retiring is likely overrated, or at least we all do better with a clear mission.
But I do know several people who have taken or made “breaks” in their career, either in the form of major career transitions or simply not working for a while. While most of us cannot afford to do this most of the time – and timing is everything – I have seen this work for some people. Any kind of significant career transition, whether proactively chosen or not, provides a chance to re-calibrate the life balance equation.
A good friend of mine with three kids lost his job during the 2008 economic meltdown, just as he was about to send two of his kids off to college. That’s the bad news. The good news is that he became a successful free agent, working for himself, and he has been working from home -which he loves – since. And he goes to all of his youngest kid’s soccer games.
Life Balance, Revisited
I’ve been asking some of my friends lately what they regard as the high points of their life. Even the most professionally-accomplished of the lot always mention their family, however big or small it is, first. For most of them, something that happened at work doesn’t even make the list. Which tells me that time with family and those closest to us is extremely important, and almost certainly what we reflect on the most towards the end of our lives.
So, life balance is important. And since its important, it must be important to think about it in the right way.
I wonder how many of us are …..
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