Work / Life Balance… achievable or the impossible dream?
Definition of ‘WORK’; activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.
Definition of ‘LIFE’: the period between birth and death, or the experience or state of being alive:
The Balance - An Impossible Dream?
Through lockdown we have all been experiencing work and life merge closer together. However, in between the blurriness of the balance I have been asking myself – which is which and can the two be defined that simply?
For me the ‘life’ bit feels like bloody hard work; children, cooking, home rubbish, even relaxing is tough & to be honest the ‘work’ bit has sometimes felt like an escape; my freedom, creativity, identity and worth.
Many reports have shown people are missing fundamental parts from both sides;
- In their ‘work’ life; the coffee just before you start, the watercooler conversations, the human contact of colleagues – and even the commute!
- In their ‘life’ – the boundaries; ‘Four in 10 employees say their lifestyle has deteriorated due to being based at home’. Home spaces – beds, kitchen tables and sofas have transformed in to offices, phones are never off, zoom is always on and the whole world now knows what you decide to put on your walls!
As Mother Pukka reminds us ‘You are not working from home; you are at home during a crisis trying to work’.
These musings led me to thinking.. actually is this Work / Life balance that is plastered across job descriptions and sold to you in interviews even achievable? Can it fit neatly in to these two boxes or is there more to it?
“A study of 2,000 employees who’ve spent recent months working from home found half wished they had a better balance”
THE FOUR SPOKES OF LIFE
Which is why when I read the ‘The Four Spokes Of Life’ in a Forbes article, my lightbulb came on. Ditching the scales and the see saw effect and introducing the wheel! ‘Each spoke is valued equally and gets close to equal attention if your wheel is balanced enough to hold shape. A balanced wheel contains both gas (doing) and brakes (being), much like a well-kept, finely tuned automobile’. Bryan Robinson introduces the spokes as;
1. Work:
Something you do that makes you a living and hopefully brings you challenge, satisfaction and value.
2. Family:
Whatever this is for you – friends, housemates, partner, children, neighbourhood. Investing time and energy in to others.
3. Play:
Anything fun & enjoyable outside your ‘family / friends’ – hobbies, creativity, volunteer work – things that take you away from your everyday routine.
4. Self-care:
A buzz word yes – but rightly so as this could be the most important spoke of all. This is prioritising the you whether it’s through sleep, exercise, time, positive self-talk or treats. Without self-care, the other three spokes don’t and can’t work.
Is your wheel ready to go or do you have a flat tyre?
The article encourages you to test out your spokes (in a rating exercise) – is your wheel ready to go or do you have a flat tyre? Have a go here!
I love this metaphor as personally the work / life balance scale always creates a feeling of failure; I have never managed it and it has always heavily tipped one way of the other (and forever with guilt attached!). I can work wth the Four Spokes - it allows me to feel less guilty about the ‘play’ bit by elevating it to ‘necessary’ and remember to [Insert] the self-care part to stop the spokes being out of whack and the whole thing not working.
The Forbes article beautifully sums it up with ‘If you were a car with a flat tyre, you would slow down, pull over on the roadside and fix the tyre. So what’s stopping you from doing that for yourself?’. So from today I am scraping the ‘balance ideal’ and adopting the 4 spokes in to my life - attempting to feel the fullness, the energy, the bounce of a complete wheel rather than walking the tightrope of an impossible dream.
If you are looking to develop ways to help you juggle work, life and all that’s imbetween contact me for a FREE CHEMISTRY CALL to find out about coaching and my programmes.
