Work-Life Balance: a fashionable jargon?
Rodrigo Machado Tavares, BEng, CEng, PhD
Technical Director (Head - Fire Safety) at Arcadis
This article only represents my own views on this subject.
This week, between the 13th and the 19th of May 2024, the Mental Health Awareness Week [1-3] is taking place here in the UK. Mental health [4] is an important issue and undoubtedly, a lot of progress has been made in this matter, particularly in the workplaces around this peculiar telluric planet.
Within this context, it is not difficult to realize how our workplaces can play a major role as well in our mental health. Depending on our work environment, our mental health can be positively or negatively impacted by it. We do not need to be a psychologist to realize that. The jargon “work-life balance” has become almost a mantra, particularly in the corporate world. ?There are several definitions for work-life balance, but according to the Cambridge Dictionary, work-life balance is “the amount of time you spend doing your job compared with the amount of time you spend with your family and doing things you enjoy” [5]. There are also numerous informative articles publicly available, such as some published by Forbes [6-8] and few other sources [9,10] which are very insightful and worthy reading them. ?
During my PhD, I did study a bit of human behavior (i.e., behavioral psychology) and this is a topic of my interest. Whenever I can, I try to learn more about it reading books and/or articles and watching videos from specialists of this field. Although very complex, this is a fascinating area. Furthermore, taking the concept of work-life balance and trying to apply some basic understanding on behavioral psychology, we can systematically conceive some hypothetical constructs. The following diagram can highlight some of these.
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In Figure 1, I propose we conceive Life as the main system which contains two sub-systems, namely Personal Life (or social life) and Professional Life (or work life). Life embraces work and for this reason I truly believe the diagram above attempts to represent it more realistically. Ideally (for a good work-life balance), the line which separates these two subsystems must not be heavily affected by these arrows coming from each sub-system, which I am calling as the influential vectors (of life). These vectors can be of different matters, natures, sizes, intensities etc. In "real life" (or whatever real life might mean... it would be interesting to say the least to be able to see a debate about what life is with brilliant minds like Spinoza; Descartes; Plato and others...) our daily challenges or problems, also joys and from these two subsystems can potentially affect (negatively or positively) our professional lives and/or our personal lives and vice-versa. The concern starts when our Professional Lives affect negatively our Personal Lives or the other way round... or even worse: mutual negative impacts. This is why it is important to always reflect, identify potential concerns in early stages, to talk with work colleagues, family, friends and be honest with ourselves about our (temporary or permanent) limitations and potential strengths to be developed in all aspects of Life. We all have ups and downs in life, depending on the circumstances we are currently living and we all have strengths and weaknesses.. we just need to identify them and work them out.
Otherwise, serious issues on our mental health can happen such as burnout syndrome, stress, depression etc.
This is why it is important to recognize all these for not only improving all aspects or the majority of them both: personal and professional lives and therefore, minimize as much as we can (and avoid) the negative impacts and maximize the positive impacts of those arrows. If we do not put this in practice, there is a risk of keeping the jargon "wok-life balance" as a fashionable jargon... almost a tick-box form for numerical KPI's.
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Be safe and enjoy life...
Rodrigo
References:
Worked over 40 years in the Global Chemical Industry
6 个月Thank Rodrigo Machado Tavares, BEng, CEng, PhD Well said. People all will worship something. We can easily make idols of our positions, power, paychecks or the things that come with these. We can even turn our kids and family into an idol. But idols are very demanding slave masters and require more and more from us. But what if instead of worshipping false idols, we worshipped someone that said “Come to me, all who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Who also said “I lay down my life for my followers”. Who is pleased when your work, your family and your life reflects principles of honor, kindness, mercy, grace, humility and an assurance that God is for us. In my view, it is not a matter of balance; it is a matter of principles and priorities. Which requires that I knock off my rough edges, learn and practice better habits and ask for guidance from trusted friends and my Heavenly Father. ????