Daily Human – Work Life Balance ( or Harmony? )

I read a lot of arguments about work life balance. I think they miss two crucial points.

One, they only focus on the ‘quantity’ aspect of work life balance ( measured in time spent ) and not the ‘quality’ aspect.

Second, they assume that work and life are fully compartmentalised and separated from each other. The reality is quite different. They are more integrated than most people realise. Which is why work life “integration” also needs to be factored into work life balance.

Let’s talk about QUANTITY and QUALITY first.

The usual argument is based on the ‘quantity’ of time spent at work. And consequently how much time is left for personal and family life. This argument is not wrong. It’s just incomplete.

You can have all the time in the world for yourself and your family and yet you could be unhappy, if you haven’t got the ‘quality’ aspect of work life balance sorted.

What is the quality aspect ?

It’s how you spend your time. Both at work and at home.

When you don’t have the ‘quality’, then your work is not satisfying enough. As a result you are likely to be unhappy and dissatisfied at work. You are likely to be in a negative state of mind and low on energy when you get home from unsatisfying work. Your unhappy state of mind will impact how you spend your time at home also. You cant just flip your mental switch and become happy and cheerful in one moment. You might have all the time in the world to spend at home and yet you won’t be able to enjoy it. Because of the state of your mind. Lots of quantity of time available but the quality of how its spent is poor.

How can this kind of work life balance ( if its missing the quality )really help ?

Now imagine you have ‘quality’. This means you enjoy your work and are happy and satisfied. You have the holy troika of motivation – autonomy, mastery and purpose. This kind of person comes home with a spring in their step. They are more likely to enjoy the time they spend at home.

Work life balance only makes sense when you have both quality and quantity. Having just one, even if you have lots of it will never work.

BIG DISCLAIMER before my next statement is taken out of context – I am not advocating that if people enjoy their work, then they should be made to work crazy hours.

But the truth is that even if it means putting in some extra hours sometimes, its worth it, if it makes you happy and satisfied. You might have a little less time at home once in a while but the time you get will be highly enjoyable. It’s better than having lots of home time without any quality.

This WORK QUALITY part is the key. Without it, there is no WORK LIFE BALANCE.

The usage of the word BALANCE is evidence that most people don’t get the quality part. They are only focussed on measuring and balancing quantity of time. Without bothering about quality.

The right word should be HARMONY.

This brings us to the second point about work life INTEGRATION.

Our professional work and personal lives are more connected than what we think. Happiness at work creates the possibility of happiness in life and at home. And a person who’s happy at home and in their personal life is more likely to also be happy at work.

The peaks and troughs of work and life also need to complement each other. There will be times where work will need long hours and your time on weekends. It will compromise the time you have for life and home. But it should be acceptable as long as work makes the same compromises for life and home. As long as you can take vacations and breaks whenever you want them. As long as you can also take time away from work if you need it for life or home.And be left in peace to enjoy your personal life in full.

Work and Life are partners who need to help each other out.

There can be no Work Life Balance, without this integration between Work and Life.

To summarise, we definitely need work and life to be balanced in terms of QUANTITY. But we also need work and life to have QUALITY. And they have to be INTEGRATED with each other.

When we have all three elements, we have more than just work life balance. We have WORK LIFE HARMONY.