I’ve never liked the phrase “work-life balance”. It says we should work only for the purpose of facilitating a life outside of our job. It implies that we’re doing something wrong if we work too much or if we prioritize work over life. It creates a division between work and life.
But work doesn’t have to be separate from life. In an ideal world what you do to make money is also something you love to do. It is something you would do even if you never earned a dime from it. Thankfully I’ve been able to build a career in this way. I don’t see my “work” as separate from my “life”. I do a variety of things every day and it just so happens that what I spend most of my time doing is broadly defined as a job.
As a younger man, I took this fortunate situation to mean that I could, and should, work constantly. That because I loved what I did for a job, and because I made this my life, then I could work constantly from morning to night and still be living a fulfilling life. As I’ve gotten older older though, I’ve rethought this outlook a bit, and I think I was a bit wrong on what makes for a well lived life.
The way I think about things these days is to follow a plan of “work-rest of life imbalance”. For me, work is always going to be how I spend the vast majority of my time. I love what I do and wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. I believe in what I work on and who I work with. This is always going to be in an imbalance with anything else I do. But it is always important to see the forest for the trees. However important a job or a project or however busy you get with work, there is much more to a well lived life than hours spent at a desk. Time spent with family, pursuing hobbies I love, and achieving other goals need to be incorporated into my every day in order to feel as if I am taking full advantage of my one go-around.
What’s more, occasionally stepping away for rest of life stuff actually helps me be more productive and effective when I work. Time away from things helps clear the mind. It’s in these down moments when insights strike you. Time away from my desk gives more perspectives and experiences from which to draw inspiration.
It’s a cliche, but they say that in the end no one wishes they spent more time working. I think this is a very important bit of information to keep in mind, but only as long as it does’t lead to trying to create some sort of work-life balance. Instead the goal is to integrate all the things you do in this world - including what you do to make money - into one seamless system. For me, I think of this system as my work-rest of life imbalance.
