The Work Life and The Balance

I often read articles and posts on social media talking about Work-Life Balance and Toxic Workplaces. Some articles point at employers and company leaderships for the lack of a balance between the professional and personal lives of its employees. Whereas some others reiterate what employees should be doing to bring-in and maintain this balance in our lives.

Forbes magazine quite transparently interprets work-life balance as “equal time or priority to personal and professional activities”. While reading this article I asked myself in introspect :

• Is the current working generation capable of detaching their personal and professional lives to maintain a work-life balance?

• Does talking about the walk, ease walking the work-life balance talk as well?

• Does talking about it enough help bring in the balance out of an imbalance?

We discuss “Work-Life Balance” to raise awareness. But is there truly a solution to this predicament? We mostly expect workplaces to have provisions where Work-Life balance will be a part of the work culture. The expectation is apt!. But we forget that organisations making provisions to prioritise Work-Life Balance, is just one side of the coin! The other side of it, are Us!

Being a part of the working class for more than a decade now myself, at one point in time I observed that my job had slowly become my routine without my realisation. On some days, it was a commitment, on other days it was a responsibility, on some other days it was a refuge from things I wanted to ignore or avoid. Following the 5-day week pattern day after day and year after year, left me feeling the burn of not being able to do anything apart from my job. I had unconsciously allowed my job to take priority over other aspects of my life. Because of this Unconscious Perspective, could I have become the reason for my Work-Life Imbalance? I wonder…

A humorous epiphany is that this imbalance starts with most of us calling ourselves ‘being workaholic’. At this initial stage, we quite proudly invite it, love it and flaunt it, until the time the imbalance becomes too much to handle. If I dissect it, ‘Workaholic’ could literally mean, ‘to love being Drunk on Work’! In the next stage, having let ourselves be so sincerely absorbed in our professions, we expect to be rewarded for being workaholics! If we are not acknowledged for it sufficiently either in cash (salary hikes, bonuses, etc.) or in kind (a promotion, growth opportunity, etc.), we feel undervalued and unappreciated.

Why do we encourage workaholism, when we are laterally searching for a balance? Let’s be honest! Who amongst our acquaintances, don’t want to be successful, sooner? Everyone! Right? Consoling ourselves, we willingly agree to contentedly sacrifice our health, sanity, family time, personal milestones and even life, to achieve a more desirable career! Will we be able to possibly return from this self-inflicted imbalance to a suitable balance? It is one thing to be ambitious. But how fair is it to be drained out in the process? There’s a thin line separating ambition from being depleted. But how do we decide when and where to draw that line?

I became conscious of my own burnout creeping in, when I kept missing out completion dates of small tasks. I could no longer understand heads-or-tails of anything my reporting manager spoke to me. I floated in the sea of his words, lost, unable to relate with any of his logic. This awareness sneakily ushered in my self-doubt. But this is not me! I consciously tried to save whatever sanity I had left. The last decision in the process was to part ways with my employer and job. But what if quitting a draining job is not possible. What then?

Scrutinising this argument countering its mess in my life, made me confront its yet another side. Many of us deny the presence of a possible imbalance between our personal and professional lives calling it a myth. This group advises on choosing between the 2 instead. On some days, it says, the job will take priority whereas on some other days, the personal life. And I feel it’s fair! In choosing so, we are often, if not everyday, reaching a balance no matter how small it may be. Evidently, like everything in this universe, our lives need a balance as well. Though worded differently, saying that the concept of Work-Life Balance is a myth is only a matter of opinion.

For me however, the question still stands - who decides when I can prioratise my work and when can I prioratise my personal life? Do I still hold the power to make this choice? Or have I already handed it over to someone else, when I made certain choices? Did I ever have this power? Or was I led to believe that I do?

What if I want to prioratise my sister’s wedding, but my manager is involving me in a project that may impact my promotion? Is there a guarantee that my ‘workaholic-ness’ would still hold the same significance if I choose to take a few days off for the ceremonies and celebrations, knowing that in my absence, my team would be slogging to make the project a success? They would even have to work extra hours to cover my productivity. So, if I knowingly still choose to focus on the wedding and keep my laptop aside, would I still be considered for the upcoming promotion, acknowledging the efforts I have put in for the past year(s)?

Does this example ring a familiar scary thought? Does it instantly not remind us of all the years that would go to waste if we don’t get this promotion? This thought forces us to intentionally and willingly prioritise our work commitments, letting go of our personal life’s milestones. One side of the coin is that many managers would only remember our performances in recent times and may delay our promotions because we chose to prioritise our personal commitments. It is easier, psychologically more humane and more efficient. Mostly performance reviews happen once a year and many of us don’t keep track of all achievements and failures throughout the year - Managers and Employees alike.

But on the flip side, though we may blame our reporting managers and organisations for this unfair judgement, how many times do we discuss our concerns and current personal priorities with them? We don’t do it, in fear of showing our vulnerable side to them. It is natural for companies to prioratise work, business goals and profits over us. It is all simply and ruthlessly Business! What we fail to accept is that everytime when we miss a family get-together for an after-hour manager meeting or a birthday party for a client call, postpone a doctor’s appointment for an upcoming target or a friends reunion for an office overtime, we give away our power and right, to our profession to mess up our work-life balance.

Reflecting on my career, I identified these fact-checks that everyone of us feeling the burnout do to muddle our work-life balance :

• We almost never take a day off. We’re almost always stuck to our phones or Laptops. We frequently work overtime - working on a project or towards a target. We let our work spillover beyond the 9-hours workday and end up bringing our work home.

• We are always constantly talking or thinking of work. Be it at an office party or a team outing. I’m not sure how many of us have experienced this, but I even dreamt of work, spent sleepless nights dreading about a mistake I ‘may have’ made or left a task  incomplete. To the extent of having pessimistic thoughts about being definitely sure to have made a mistake and being scolded for it.

• Quite often, we unmindfully invent work - spending more time on an email trying to perfect it, procrastinating finishing a task, overthinking a decision. When we are away from work, we keep feeling that we have missed something - probably sending that important email out for next week’s review, or a meeting invite scheduled for next month.

• We struggle to focus on work not knowing what to prioritise - where to begin, which task to finish first. We begin feeling strained and/or scatterbrained.

• We unmindfully and unintentionally stop noticing our personal relationships. Missing a friend’s bachelorette party for an important contract discussion and signing. Making PPTs at a cousin’s engagement party for an important presentation next week. Delaying a wedding anniversary date with your spouse because of an ongoing project on the brink of its submission deadline.

• So we feel tired all the time. We can’t really put a finger on whether it's emotional exhaustion or physical or both. Then we often begin feeling irritable, our patience wearing thin, even on trivial ignorable things, for no specific reason. We even become borderline complainer.

• We no longer have time to enjoy ourselves anymore. Rather, we choose to prioritize our work and start ignoring our health. We get out of shape letting our body be almost always in pain.

My corporate journey made me recognise that maintaining a work-life balance is not only an organisation's responsibility towards its employees, but also our prerogative towards ourselves. Thus, to bring in a Work-Life balance both in our lives and have it become a part of our organisation’s work culture, the effort will have to be 2-fold. Where we would need supportive leaders backing us when we prioratise our personal lives. We, on the other hand, would have to genuinely choose to prioratise, discuss it with our leadership and be part of those special moments in our own lives.