Work-life Balance: Do It Your Way

Minakshi is 37, single, a vice president of a bank and financially independent. She has worked long hours and sacrificed personal life for years to be where she is today. The common expectation was that she can stay back till late, because she wasn’t married. She wondered if ‘life’ amounts to only marriage and kids. She gave in to the pressure of expectation in the initial years. But the long hours were taking a toll on her health, and she had to draw the line somewhere. It was unfair that people never thought she had or needed some kind of time out to live her life, whatever it was.

Gina has been on her own for the last seven years. Her husband travels quite a bit, so she decided to first freelance and then start her own business. With no kids, she still finds it hard to strike that elusive work-life balance that we all crave for. Time isn’t any less demanding on her because she doesn’t have children. She has a routine when her spouse travels. But when back home, he works out of home and she needs to plan her work around his schedule. She does manage to get her work-life-and-bank balance going.

Work-life balance is a concept that has taken our lives by storm in recent times. And the need for it is especially underscored for mothers, since they have a career and kids to take care of. There are tons of articles online on how to achieve this balance while ensuring that you have enough time for your kids. But the fact is that work-life balance is important for everyone. Even men struggle to achieve it in their lives.

Balance means your time is divided effectively across the two broad areas of your life. But does your life have just two compartments? And is time spread across them as effectively as you wish to? And isn’t work also ‘life’?

While you might follow all the advice to help you achieve this coveted balance, it is also true that work will continue to occupy a major part of our lives. How we balance it with all the other things that we want to do--family, workout, travel etc--is the true benchmark of our balance.

While I don’t have precise steps for you to follow and achieve work-life balance, I have suggestions to liberate you from the myth that there is a certain balance that you should aim for. In no particular order:

• Set your goals and expectations. Keep your expectations realistic.

• Work from home, if that works for you. Get a co-working space, if it doesn’t.

• Don’t compare yourself with how others in a similar situation manage their lives. Comparisons kill your uniqueness.

• Make to-do lists, if they work for you. Don’t, if unticked items only intimidate you.

• Find gaps to do your own thing--take an afternoon off, read at a cafe, sneak into a matinee show.

• Take the rest of the day off if you finish your tasks for the day. We seldom reward ourselves.

• When things get too much, take a weekday off to break the cycle and gain some perspective.

• Be spontaneous at times. Planned routine can get monotonous.

• Steal additional time with family or spouse as a surprise.

• Keep your family and people who matter abreast of what’s happening at work. This will get you support and understanding when you need it the most.

• Your work-life balance will also depend on the kind of bank balance you are looking at, since financial independence is an important thing that keeps us going on our jobs/business ventures.

Like I said, there is tons of advice online. But does it work for everyone? I have realised that no two people are in the same situation with a similar set of needs. What works for one might not work for another. Single or married with kids--each one of us has our own goals and expectations from our work and life. I spent years trying to explain my erratic routine to people, since my spouse worked around India and US time and had irregular eating and sleeping patterns. But I gradually figured that I didn’t have to answer to anyone. This kind of work-life balance suited us, and it did not have to be the same as someone who has the precision of a 9-5 job.

I feel we are dictated, a tad too much, by others’ ideas of what work-life balance should be. It means different things for different people. So, go ahead and explore your work and life, and determine what’s your ideal balance.

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