Tropical islands, companies giving staff time off to create, reading a book from cover to cover, time away from emails, learning a new language, working from home while looking after the kids, getting home at a reasonable hour, joining a gym. Lifestyle options all but not achievable by all and it's the constant challenges and obstructions at work that many see as the reason the above are not achieved. A blame game to deflect admissions and short comings in a life lived unbalanced.
Liberty holding the scales of justice is the analogy many use as life and work constantly seesaw in priority. Yet the scales never seem to be in line and balanced, in fact they always seem tilted towards work with life scrambling for attention. Thousands of books, articles and presentations by eminent psychologists, lifestyle consultants and the ever present corporate drop out who claims to have found the successful formula for life and work balance are thrown at the challenge every day. Even companies are getting involved, thinking if they give back time, the problem is solved. VW recently agreed to shut off the Blackberry accounts of workers once their shifts ended, in the hope they really do clock off.
So many options for a work life balance, the permutations offered by the experts and companies concerned for their employees are often as confusing as the outcomes. In the end one factor holds sway over the equation, control, control over decisions and contributions at work and control in family life away from work. Therein lies the biggest challenge, not many people are in control and because of that, they blame work or external forces for the in-balance in the lifestyle scales.
Where balance seems an easy concept to achieve, via quick fix self help books et al, control is the benchmark if the scales really are to align. Reading life lessons from others won't give you control, listening to motivated corporate drop outs won't give you control and watching the Lifestyle channel will get you no closer to a life of control. Looking for the quick fix, comes from a victim's view point on life, it's always someone else's fault you don't have enough time for family, work and your personal growth to be in harmony.
No one wants to hear about getting control back into their lives because it takes work and admissions that maybe you don't know how to get that control and maybe you have become a cog in a system and you don't quite know how that happened. It's not for the Lifestyle expert to give you back that control, it's about you understanding the requirements of change and working towards goals giving you back the ascendancy of a life well managed. For many that could be admitting you prefer to be at work rather than having a BBQ with the in-laws on the weekend because lifestyle is not about tropical islands for everyone.
The scales are a bad analogy for work life balance as they often only align as they pass each other on the way up or down your chaos. For many, work is life, so it's the successful controlled merge of the two, that could be the answer.
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