Work / Life Balance - Is It Possible?

Family day has come and gone. For many of us Canadians, this day is a small reprieve in the chaos of juggling the personal and the professional.

The topic of “work / life” balance has been an ongoing discussion for quite a while, and the issue seems to be of greater concern to women in the workplace, rather than their male counterparts. Absolutely there are men who are the main caregivers and regardless, we're all searching for that work / life balance. However, statistics continue to demonstrate that women, even those heading multi-national corporations, are still the ones most often managing the greater percentage of household and family obligations.

Several years ago I heard an interview with Ursula Burns who, at the time, was CEO at Xerox – and the first black woman to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the United States.

“It's a ‘fool's journey’ to try to achieve perfect balance between one's professional and personal lives”, Burns stated. Instead, she suggested women get comfortable with the idea of taking "your entire life to find balance. You should have balance, on average, over time - not in a day or in a month."

On hearing this, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief (and mentally tucked away my copy of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”). If Ursula Burns can admit that she is not 100% successful in finding that balance between work and life, then who is?

And the other side of this discussion dissects what it is we mean when we say ‘life’. As a mother, I instantly assume that the ‘life’ side of the equation is approximately 99% full with ‘family’. If you do the math, that leaves little time for yoga, meditation, deep breathing, dog walks, time with friends; all those things we’re constantly told we must have in our lives to achieve some sort of balance and happiness.

So, as family day retreats in the rear view mirror, how do we proceed with some sense of balance, even knowing the struggle is going to be life long? And where does the ‘we’ balance end and the ‘me’ balance begin?

The biggest challenge we face today is the ‘on-line 24/7’ reality. Back in the day, when dad pulled out of the laneway in the panelled station wagon for the family holiday, he did not have a cell phone connected to 5 email accounts, exploding social media accounts and text messaging. He would get back to his colleagues and clients when the road trip was over, a week or two later.

Today, we are expected to be responding to all of it, all of the time, despite the hundreds of articles telling us about the many reasons for turning it all off. Some advice suggests not just turning off the devices, it encourages us to hand them over. Maybe to one of the kids? It’s impossible to be present in any moment if all those moments are filled with ‘checking in’. We might be doing everything all of the time but are we doing any of it very well? Probably not.

Bill Gates has spoken about the drive that places people at the top. He refers to it as ‘beginners hunger’ which is a fanatical approach that finds many highly successful people with the same threads running through their professional and personal lives; namely that they missed out on most of the personal while pursuing the professional. This fanaticism is driven by a fear that the top spots will be taken by others and that (incredibly ambitious) goals will never be achieved otherwise. But even Bill Gates recognizes that this is not a sustainable approach. Which is why he refers to it as relevant to ‘beginners’.

Rushing from one meeting to another, taking business calls, and dealing with work emergencies while still trying to get to the soccer game, the piano recital and the grocery store can certainly make anyone feel unbalanced. However, research shows that people who strive to be outstanding and successful in their fields actually thrive in an unbalanced environment. Its one of the reasons they are successful. But does everyone else close to you want to be living in that same, crazy, imbalanced world? You might be okay with helping with homework while sending work emails but is your child?

At some point in our professional lives, we should be able to carve out the time for personal things. For many of us, the workday is never defined by 9-5. But perhaps it could be defined as 8-6, rather than 24/7? And maybe, just maybe, we could lose the phone for a good part of the weekend? And in that re-captured time, maybe we could even manage to carve out time for that 30-minute dog walk, or that weekly yoga class?

When you board a plane, the attendants go thru the safety procedures, one of which being the importance of putting on your own oxygen mask before taking care of others. Maybe it's time we did just that.