The last few days I have been workshopping at a clients wellness day. I have been very interested to hear the challenges that people face in the area of ‘work life balance’.
My take on the term is that we need to get rid of the word balance. It seems the separation of work and life as two separate entities is what is getting us into trouble.
When work is seen as one thing and life as another it would make sense that when there is too much work and not enough life that the desire to escape work becomes very real. We end up living for 1.5 days of the week - Saturday and half of Sunday and simply getting through the necessary grind that is work Monday to Friday.
But what if we simply looked at just LIFE and decided that LIFE includes work and a bunch of other stuff?
The most important question then becomes - how do I live optimally?
A few commented that the answer to a happy work life is in fact working for yourself where your time is yours i.e. when you get to work less and have more space to surf, take time out etc. Again, when the work side is minimal and the life side is maximum. This is why books such as ‘4 hour work week’ have been a such a great success. The quest is to reduce work and increase life. Most saw the ultimate ideal as work ending and life being the only thing to enjoy.
Work is getting in the way...
At Appletree we call this preparing to live. We need to challenge this perspective and move toward living life now.
Sometimes the changes are subtle. For example one of the differences I saw was in the approach to work by those who exercise and those who don’t. Those who exercise seemed to have a notably different perspective on their work. One woman commented to me that ‘her nerves were frazzled’ before she committed to running every day. Her work has not changed but her experience of work has through her engaging intentionally with the other important areas of life!
Another chooses to get out with her friends during the week. Another chooses to grab a coffee during the day. Small things which remind us that work is part of life rather than feeling like work is consuming life!
In other words if we change the way we live our experience of work will change too.
We need to ask ourselves what we can do to live more optimally even whilst our reality includes a full time job or a difficult work season. What else needs to be included in your life and how can you be more intentional about living well given...
Life includes work and a bunch of other stuff.
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Travis Gale has spent the last 5 years running his own development business in South Africa’s corporate world and is currently involved in various long term partnerships with clients across a number of industries. Furthermore he has travelled to conferences internationally hunting down latest trends and insights. Having cycled around the world and survived a tsunami, his passion for crossing borders often lends itself to an interesting blend of stories and insight. He sees himself as a ‘change catalyst’ and displays strength in facilitating insight into the right spaces. Find out more at www.appletreelive.com