There’s a lot of talk about how to achieve work-life balance.
But I don’t think it’s possible.
Work-life balance assumes there’s a perfect ratio between work and life and that your life will be great if you can reach that elusive ratio.
But life doesn’t work like that. There are times when you’ll need a break to bring your kids to school, take a personal day to help a friend, or go on vacation to recharge.
And there are times when you’ll have to put in more hours at work to hit a deadline or finish a big project.
Instead of fighting for work-life balance, we should strive for work-life integration. Our goal should be to make both work and life work depending on our season of life. That could change depending on the week, month, or year. Life and the demands on our time are dynamic and continually changing. Balance will never exist, but the goal of integration and giving both work and life enough attention based on their current needs is realistic and attainable.
We need both work and life to thrive as people. Instead of beating ourselves up to reach this idea of the perfect work-life balance, we need to move the conversation to the more attainable and flexible goal of work-life integration.
It’s all about making work and life work for you, not the other way around.
I put together a video which talks about this in more detail. Please check it out below and if you want more content like this you can subscribe to my Youtube channel.
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This episode is sponsored by Workplace from Meta.
Workplace is a business communication tool from Meta. Think Facebook, but for your company.
It’s part of Meta’s vision for the future of work. A future in which we’ll all feel more present, connected and productive.
Start your journey into the future of work at workplace.com/future.
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