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The Myth of Work-Life Balance

By crooky | June 14, 2008

Over the years, I have heard people that I otherwise respect chide me on my lack of “work-life balance”. They see my weight problems, my obvious lack of sleep and my stress levels as an outward sign of a pending collapse. What they don’t see is the level of satisfaction that I derive from my hard work. Happiness is overrated and being content is undervalued.

My hypothesis is that the whole “work-life balance” shtick is a joke - dreamt up by naive HR hacks during the peak of the dot com era to compensate for the fact that dot commers were working 80 hours a week and loving their lives. They saw that these young men and women were going to work, enjoying their jobs, taking naps when they needed to, socializing with their co-workers and giving themselves the flexibility to take a refreshing break from work when and how they wanted.

Say what you will about the dot com era - some of those guys learned that happy employees work harder. The whole concept of “work-life balance” is an admittance that your life as a wage slave in some corporation, government office or company is sucking the life out of you. If your job didn’t reek like rotting dog shit in the hot sun, you wouldn’t need your boss to tell you that you need to spend more time doing the things you enjoy. You’d be doing what you enjoy - while you’re at work.

I have also seen that many employers who tout the work-life balance system (WLBS™) will chide you for working too much unpaid overtime (with a wink, knowing full well that you’re underpaid and overworked and that’s how they like it) but God help you if you ask for one of your flex days to take a day off to go chill at the beach or to get chemotherapy or something. All of a sudden, your manager is watching your every move. Your e-mail will start to get monitored.

There is an implied rule in this environment that if you actually try to embrace the WLBS™, you’ll find yourself out of a job or starved to death in a dead-end career. What they want you to do is to appreciate the WLBS™ from a distance, work just as much unpaid overtime as your boss and choke down some cheap fucking hotdogs with no-name brand mustard at the company fundraiser where they tell you that you have to give $100 off every paycheque to the community. That’s what the WLBS™ is all about.

FUCK THAT. If you love your job and you look forward to going to work every morning - you have achieved work-life balance. If someone has to tell you to spend more time doing things that you enjoy so that you don’t start making claims against the company psychotherapy benefit pool - get the hell out. When work is no longer a disruptive force in your life, you’ve arrived.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Business of Consulting, social issues |

2 Responses to “The Myth of Work-Life Balance”

  1. Karl Staib - Your Work Happiness Matters Says:
    June 17th, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    I agree. If you are happy with the way that you are living life. Screw everyone else. All that matters is you feel like you are doing the right thing.

    Some people can smoke until their 80, but and here’s the but, most people can’t. I think that it’s important to find the balance that works for each individual person. Most people need to take vacations and breaks at work.

    It’s all up to you to find out what works best and just go with it.

  2. crooky Says:
    June 19th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    I take your point Karl. I think the tough pill for me to swallow is that fact that many mainstream employers use the phrase “work-life balance” as a blugeon, not a perk.

    The unspoken threat is “even if we overwork you, the onus is on you to make sure you don’t burn out”. That’s the part that pisses me off.

    I relish the fact that we’re moving into an era where labour demand outstrips supply. This means that guys like me don’t have to work a bunch of unpaid overtime to keep our jobs. Hopefully.

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