Work/Life Balance is a Scam

Work/Life Balance is a Scam

Sam was exhausted. Reading multiple articles about work/life balance they wondered how they got here. They were holding down three jobs and the stress was finally getting to them. Even to the point of putting them in the hospital for three days.

One of those three jobs was at a business they had started a couple years prior, and they wondered if it was finally time to jump in with both feet. Shedding off the other two work responsibilities certainly would be a financial hit, but something had to change.

They weren’t trying to get rich. They were looking for something deeper than that. They didn’t need total freedom from having to work; they just wanted the flexibility to fully live the life they envisioned. They were looking for fulfillment.

All Sam really wanted was to be able to spend more time with family and perhaps make their health a more important focus than it had been. Their whole life had been spent making compromises instead of decisions for themselves.

So with this growing business opportunity before them, Sam took the plunge into the world of building a business that was their own. Where they could make decisions that would ultimately create a life they actually wanted to live.

The Work/Life Balance Delusion

My guess is, if you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you may have been looking for a lot of the same things as Sam. Most of us who set out to start a business are looking for that same flexibility to live a better life. But what does that even mean?

The phrase we have been given to define this “better life” is work/life balance.

Circle halved with one side for work and one side for life.

This idea usually comes in two flavors.

  1. I need to keep work and life separate and balanced
  2. I work to provide for my life

The first tells you to check your personal life at the door when you get to work and pick it up on the way out. And when at home, don’t even think about work. It encourages you to have your work life and home life and to keep them as far apart from each other as possible.

The second says that the only real use for work is to provide for all the times when you are not at work. Tolerate or suffer through the work so you can get to the good stuff. Who you really are is made up of what you do when you are away from the work.

I don’t know about you, but both of these sound miserable to me. I also don’t think they are accurate or healthy. Our lives are more complex than only two halves. In fact, your actual life probably looks more like this.

A circles divided into slices of various sizes to demonstrate the various categories of life.

We work and we spend time with our families. It’s likely you have hobbies and friends that you like to devote some energy to. Many of us would like time to give attention to our heath and fitness. To throw all those things into the life category while giving work it’s own large piece of the pie ignores the complexity of our lives.

So what’s the alternative to work/life balance?

Not Work/Life Balance, but Integration

Here is the problem. I don’t think we’re looking for work/life balance. I don’t want to make sure these things are even. I’m looking for life to win every single time. But I don’t think that has to come at the expense of work either.

I’m also not looking to avoid work. If I’m doing it right, I love it, it matters, and I’m damn good at it! I am me at work and I am me at home. And they are not different people.

I want to be a whole person. I don’t want to be separated into work me and life me, only to have one half subjugated to the service of the other. Work is a part of our lives. And we ought to pursue meaningful work that enhances those lives.

When I am at home, the work doesn’t cease to exist or matter. It’s a part of me and I want to share that with my family and friends. I don’t want to have to turn that part of me off. That’s how stress builds and bubbles over, only now the outbursts have no context.

When I am at work, the rest of my life comes with me. I’m not just my work role. I am also a spouse, a parent, and any number of other things. And those things inform my work. They actually make me better at my work. They add more color and contrast and give me a better perspective. My experiences outside of my work help humanize my work.

The reason work/life balance is a scam is because work is a part of our lives, not separate from it. We shouldn’t be aiming for balance. We should be aiming for the integration of our whole self.

Work/Life Integration in Practice

A circle divided into dozens of slices showing very small alternate categories of a person's life

Work/Life integration looks more fluid and flexible. We don’t have huge amounts of time slotted for a specific category. Instead our lives are dynamic and happen more organically.

We don’t throw away schedules and time boxes. We adapt them to the lives we want to live. I still schedule times of deep and uninterrupted work. It’s just not 9 to 5. For me it’s more like 2 hours first thing in the morning and various other times throughout the day. Then I like to workout. During my cool-down I’ll check email and other messages.

When I do the various things that make up my life really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that they serve the life I want to live. It all still gets done.

Not sure how that would work for you? Here are some suggestions.

Determine What is Essential

Survey all the categories of your life. Figure out what things are truly essential for you to give yourself to. In doing so, you will hopefully remove some of the clutter. This will free you up to schedule the things that really matter.

Not sure how to figure out what is essential. Read the book Essentialism that I shared at the top of my top 10 books for business leaders.

Protect your Schedule

Once you have it scheduled, stick to it. Discuss it with the people it will impact the most. Your family, your co-workers, those you meet with regularly. Make them all partners by sharing your plans and respecting theirs.

For instance, I don’t ever schedule meetings in the first half of my day. I protect that for deep work and exercise. It’s the only way those things get done. I’ve let everyone know this, and I’ve rescheduled all my recurring meetings for the afternoon.

Give Yourself Permission to Deviate

The point of this is to live a more flexible life. A schedule is important, but life is more complex than any of our schedules. We have last minute doctors appointments, project alterations, and unexpected social opportunities.

This process should make your life more full, not less. Live your life as best you can and know that sometimes the schedule has to adapt to your life and not the other way around.

Rinse & Repeat

Check in with yourself and evaluate how it’s working. You’re likely to get it wrong the first couple of times. The two most common issues are: not knowing when you are really at your best for each of the things you care about and not adhering to the schedule.

I would check in weekly and then less often as you have fewer changes to make. I still check in every couple months to make sure things are running optimally for me.

Business Leaders, Your Teams Want This Too

Remember Sam who we met at the beginning of this article? We are all Sam. You, me, and every person who fills, or will be considered to fill, a position for your company.

We would all be better off with this kind of work/life integration. As entrepreneurs and business leaders, we have the authority to make these changes for ourselves right now. But the people who work for our companies don’t. You could can change that.

Consider what it would look like if you gave every person on your team the opportunities we discussed above. Imagine how much happier and fulfilled their lives could be if they didn’t have to see work as something competing with the other categories of their life.

Fight for their right to live their best life and see how much better your business can be.

A Quick Sidebar

This post is for almost everyone who has the option of working from home and many who don’t. That is not to say that there aren’t still jobs that require set schedules and shifts to maintain coverage. If you are a leader of one of those types of jobs I would encourage you to challenge your assumptions.

Work/Life integration might be difficult in those industries, but that’s not a reason not to try. It’s a reason to try harder.