WHY JEFF BEZOS IS WRONG

Thinking Beyond Work-Life Dichotomoy

Author: Afroz Ali — Senior Instructor

“Life is work in progress. There will be no one point of time where we find harmony, which we can then magically bottle up for use the next day and the next after that”.

H e may be right — Jeff Bezos — insofar as what he may have meant, when he told Thrive Global regarding work-life balance vs. work-life harmony. But words make impact, and words from a powerful person makes powerful impact.

Before delving deeper into the whole concept of work-life dichotomy, let us also acknowledge that his statement about ‘work-life balance’ (as was also the case of Arianna Huffington) has made positive impact on the masses, and although it has been taken up by many looking to bring balance into their lives, the issue is mostly exploited by the marketeers and social media gurus of how to sell anything and everything via Facebook (or Amazon). And that might exactly be the point overall: not everything is for sale, or about work, or that ‘life’ is not some compromising rivalry with work.

Balance Is Not A Trade-Off

Bezos’s contention is about the term ‘balance’, that it “tends to imply a strict tradeoff”. His contention is not about the work-life dichotomy, and that is where is very wrong, and is dangerously influencing yet another generation or two towards a seriously materialistic lifestyle, where the over-arching human capital lies in selling and buying through some employment. It is quite OK (I think) for Amazon to be identified through being the biggest retailer on the face of the earth. But human capital is far greater than being seen through the lens of algorithms and sales potential, which is to be counter-balanced with ‘life’. I jump from ‘work’ to the concepts of ‘selling’ because ultimately much of, not all, work as we see it is centred in that paradigm- whether it is selling services or products.

Balance Is Not Equal Division

This ever-popular (and confusing) dichotomy — work-life balance — is further complicated when ‘balance’ is explained by David Ballard — director of the American Psychological Association’s Center for Organizational Excellence — as, “I think the way work-life balance gets talked about is frequently inaccurate … The ‘balance’ part of it is implying you’re equally dividing time and energy, which isn’t necessarily the case”.

My contention is that they both are advocating for something less than harmonious, where ‘work-life’ dichotomy is assumed to be inherently good, and somehow the virtuous aspiration of ‘balance’ is a problem. They might not mean to portray that, but words make impact and two influential people, amongst many others, make powerful and influential impact to affect paradigms that are neither harmonious nor balance but potentially harmful and counter-productive.

Why Is Bezos and Ballard Wrong

Let’s address Jeff Bezos’s assertion first.

The problem is not so much that the ‘work-life balance’ paradigm is a trade-off between the two; there is some truth to that. Furthermore, his popularising coinage ‘work-life harmony’ may use the term ‘harmony’, but it implies anything but. We must bear in mind that ‘work’ referred to in this context is employment, not work as in, for example, charity, parenting or volunteering, but work as in what one does as employment (and, sure, be paid for) to make a corporation profitable. And therein lies the problem.

And here is what needs to be addressed, particularly by influential people who choose to publicly speak on this subject: to advocate for holistic living, in which work is not anchored as the balancing or harmonising factor of salvation to our life.

The paradigm we ought to seek to live is not ‘work-life balance’ or ‘work-life harmony’, but a balanced life through which we attain harmony. Work is just one of the many important segments that make up our life. Work is not that sole force that brings balance or harmony to our lives. It is important, undoubtedly, but it is no more important than, for example, our physical and emotional health or our spiritual or faith needs. In the follow-up article, I will highlight the spheres that are important in our overall life, and balance within each of them as well as how they influence other spheres, so that we may find harmony in our lives.

David Ballard’s assertion is simply technically incorrect.

Balance is not an equal division of things, even if there are only two of them on either side of a seesaw. Just as balance of weights is not attained based simply on equal division of mass on either side of a centrally placed fulcrum, the burdens and responsibilities of life are also not attained by creating a dichotomous lifestyle.

Two dissimilar weights can be balanced on a fulcrum by simply moving the location of the fulcrum. That is pretty much high school physics. Human nature is slightly more tricky, yes, but the principle is similar.

Similarly, life does not come in equal packages. In fact, life’s burdens and joys change pretty much daily. And the art of living is learning to move the fulcrum of life proportionate to the heavy burdens and light joys as they change. The fulcrum of life is called moderation. As long as we seek to achieve moderation in the various spheres of our lives, we will be able to hopefully find a reasonable balance. When we do, we then experience harmony and contentment within ourselves, that we gave the best we could to all the various spheres. We recognise that we did not negatively compromise on one thing for the sake of another, but we sought an effective balance regarding them.

Finding Harmony

Life is work in progress. There will be no one point of time where we find harmony, which we can then magically bottle up for use the next day and the next after .

The art of living in harmony lies in the mastery of what our life is made up of. Mastery of our work, mastery of our personal relationships and mastery of our personal being, all influence each other in contributing to a balanced life: a balanced life in which we experience — as many times as we possibly can achieve it — harmony. Harmony is a result of mastering the art of juggling life (and work might be the heaviest of weights we throw up in the air that cause the greatest of imbalances…).

In the follow-up article, I will address the various spheres of our lives as well as the idea of harmony that arises from living a balanced life, and suggest why Jeff Bezos may also be right…

Transformative Living’s Senior Instructor, Afroz Ali, has a podcast — Power of Purpose — that you can listen to. It is a series of lectures, reflections and very practical advice on leading a meaningful life embedded in happiness that guides us to eventual success.