Location and the Myth of Work Life Balance

Location guilt seems to be the thing we’re talking about when we say work life balance

When we are at home we should be at work when at work we should be at home and that’s without throwing fitness and friends into the mix.

We end up only seeing friends that fit the formula and doing exercise that does too.

It can be like a constant battle for good enough or avoiding too many arguments or criticism.

What work life balance often ends up meaning is hiding, keeping your head down and hope you get away with it.

Like we live to make other people happy or not even happy... just not unhappy.

The upshot of this is something like, be home long enough to say good night to the kids, perhaps even eat with then be fully engaged all weekend while battling the desire to nap.

Friends over in the evening, get drunk to numb, regret it the next day. Cycle to work for exercise.

Work life balance is talked about a lot because it’s a seriously hard problem to solve if solve is the correct way to talk about it.

It’s probably something more like navigate or even negotiate.

The starting point though I think is to start looking at at time very differently.

People don’t want time from us they want attention and connection.

And we need to move away from the question, how do I get this done in this time,

and towards something like, how do I make this task unnecessary, myself redundant?

How can I spend 10 hours working out how to do this 10 hour task in 1 hour so it only take 1 hour going forward?

That’s part of it.

Then it’s maybe what do I want from my life in terms of relationships with partner, children, friendships how do they see it?

I’ve seen many a “depressed” relationship as a result of this.

The cool thing is that having these conversations and thinking this way will make you so much better at your job that I’d have one of you over 5 of them.

Problem solvers are just more valuable especially problems involving humans and how they get along. Living happy fulfilled lives both as individuals and collective.

Balance is the wrong word really.

Harmony is a better way of looking at it. It’s openness not closedness that allows you to navigate it.

It’s moving from guessing what others want to asking and negotiating and compromising.

And honestly I think people are drawn to people (and companies) that have done this in their own lives.

Nobody really wants a workaholic boss or role model. They want someone who as at least tried fo navigate the same problems that plague them.