Finding the balance between work and life in this year
Book Review: Life is not work, work is not life’ by Johnston & Smith
6 o’clock Monday morning in Nairobi and the streets are filled with people quickening up and down; traffic jams, noisy matatus, frustrated drivers, and the chilly July weather. Lunchtime and food joints are met with takeaways and busy people in queues full of activity swiping away their smartphones in a bid to check emails or see what’s trending. But where is everyone rushing to? What is it that we are trying so hard to achieve every day? What defines success for you? What brings you happiness-head, heart, or wallet? Did you know that studies of lottery winners show that they are no happier a year after winning than they were before winning? Are you as a manager taking time off to appreciate the little things in life? Are you allowing your employees to do the same or are you the only one posting #livinglarge #holidaythings on Instagram? What did your #NewYearPoll reveal for you this year? Maybe one of your goals is to spend more quality time with friends, yourself, or even your pet! If so, read on.
Work–life balance is about how we combine work with the other areas of our life, such as children, family, friends, and outside interests.
“Living a life of extremes tends to produce good press but poor people.”
In the 1970’s all the societal indicators suggested that the length of the average work week would continue to drop as it had been for the last hundred years. By the eighties, things had changed. The average workweek had again begun to climb. This has continued over the last two decades, so that now we work on average over forty-seven hours a week. Moreover, we are working harder than ever when we are not on the job, trying to squeeze a maximum number of fun things into our ever-tightening schedules. This has been worsened by our ‘ever-connected state’ that continues to lessen rather than amplify our time. Something of course has to give. For many, this has been time with our children or our friends. For others, it has been sleep. We sense that our lives lack a proper rhythm or balance, but we seem caught in our expectations and obligations.
Some are arguing today that we are addicted to work. And it is a temptation. That addiction goes well beyond our job at work and our computers at home to include our commitment to incessant busyness in all our lives. Even our play is not immune from this “bug.” For all of us at times, it is as if we have no right to be if we are not constantly doing something, producing something, making something. Yet as we began this new year, most of us had the common sense to know that such extremes produce skewed human beings. Despite our actions to the contrary, life is not work and work is not life.
WHAT DO THE STATISTICS SAY
A Mental Health Foundation survey found:
- one-third of respondents feel unhappy or very unhappy about the time they devote to work
- more than 40% of employees are neglecting other aspects of their lives because of work, which may increase their vulnerability to mental health problems
- When working long hours more than a quarter of employees feel depressed (27%), one-third feel anxious (34%), and more than half feel irritable (58%).
- The more hours you spend at work, the more hours outside of work you are likely to spend thinking or worrying about it.
- As a person’s weekly hours increase, so do their feelings of unhappiness.
- Many more women report unhappiness than men (42% of women compared with 29% of men), which is probably a consequence of competing life roles and more pressure to ‘juggle’.
Only a life in balance is truly a life in full.
- Nearly two-thirds of employees have experienced a negative effect on their personal life, including lack of personal development, physical and mental health problems, and poor relationships, and poor home life.
25 REASONS TO COOL OFF ONCE IN A WHILE
1. Sanity of life- Every now and then go away, and have a little relaxation, since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment. Go some distance away because a lack of harmony or proportion is more readily seen- Leonardo Da Vinci. The genius of da Vinci’s counsel is not simply that work should be paralleled by life, but rather that without a life, work itself is compromised.
2. Peace of Mind-I enjoy myself most when I am so at peace that activity is secondary. I also know how difficult it is to develop this habit-M.C Richards
3. In pursuit of fulfillment- Inner happiness, external play, objective vocational success, mature inner defenses, and good outward marriage, all correlate highly-not perfectly, but at least as powerfully as height correlates with weight-George Vaillant.
4. For the sake of good health- With people now waking up to the fact that widespread sleep deprivation is a major threat to our public health and productivity, the ability to get adequate rest has become a new denominator of luxury, status and privilege.
5. We will not be remembered for our work- The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love-William Wordsworth
6. We miss out on the real pleasures of life-Music will help to dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibility-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
7. There’s more to life-I have long believed that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves- Bruce Grocott
8. We don’t spend time alone anymore- The measure of a person is how they handle their time alone.
9. It’s costly not to relax-A health study sponsored by World Bank found that business travelers are 3 times as likely as non-travelers to file insurance claims for treatment of the stress, worry, and depression that comes from being on the road.
10. You are accountable to your body-Everyone has a vocation by which he earns his living, but he also has a vocation in an older sense of the word-the vocation to use his powers and live his life well-Richard W. Livingstone
11. More wealth doesn’t equal more happiness-A recent survey of research around the world found that basically no correlation between income and happiness exists in advanced countries, which is to say; being rich doesn’t make a person happier.
12. You get to learn new things- March 14; I felt like I’d waited all my life to peel off my city ways, and city life, and get into the woods. If you let it be, if you forget old things, and learn new ones, even a week can last forever- Rick Bass
13. Enjoy life’s delicacies slowly-Surveys show that the number of breakfasts carried from home has doubled since 1984 and that the number of people eating a fast-food breakfast has gone up 28% since 1995.
14. Laughter is medicine-People who laugh live longer than those who don’t laugh-James Walsh
15. We can lose sight of who we really are- We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be-Kurt Vonnegut
16. We have forgotten how to play-It takes a mature person to play.
17. You are becoming a slave-That state is a state of slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him-Eric Gill
18. Technology has taken over-Technology and the virtual office has obscured any dividing line between home and office. Genuine leisure-true time off-no longer exists
19. Do it for the sake of your religion-Their religion forces them to connect, with their community, with God-Edward Hallowell
20. You learn the art of contentment- John Stuart Mill observed that either tranquility or excitement could make us happy. Tranquil, we are content with less. Excited, we can put up with more pain.
There’s more to life than merely increasing its speed-Gandhi
21. We harm ourselves-Constant unrelieved stress endangers our health and well-being. Our immune system is weakened, biological and genetic processes are interrupted and distorted, brain cells die, and our systems overflow with an unnatural flood of hormones and bodily chemicals.
22. We are passing the trend to our kids-In a 2000 nationwide poll of kids 9–14 years of age commissioned by Nickelodeon/Time,23% said they would rather be rich and unhappy than poor and happy, up from 14% saying so a year earlier.
23. Enjoy your breaks- A Survey in 1996 found that 39% of us no longer take a real lunch break. Another survey in 1997 found that 55% of workers take 15 minutes or less for lunch. Another 1996 survey discovered as few as 12% of workers take an hour or more to eat lunch.
24. We are losing the human touch-In a survey commissioned by the American Animal Hospital Association,57% of pet owners preferred to be stranded on a desert island with their pet than with another person.
25. It costs lives-Research shows that 63 million Americans are sleep-deprived and that 23% of adults report having fallen asleep at the wheel within the past year. Some studies conclude that sleepy drivers cause as many accidents as drunken drivers.
Which way forward
1. Helping yourself
The following actions may help.
· Take personal responsibility for your work-life balance. This includes speaking up when work expectations and demands are too much. Employers need to be aware of where the pressures lie to address them.
· Try to ‘work smart, not long’. This involves tight prioritization — allowing yourself a certain amount of time per task — and trying not to get caught up in less productive activities, such as unstructured meetings that tend to take up lots of time.
· Take proper breaks at work, for example by taking at least half an hour for lunch and getting out of the workplace if you can.
· Try to ensure that a line is drawn between work and leisure. If you do need to bring work home try to ensure that you only work in a certain area of your home — and can close the door on it.
· Take seriously the link between work-related stress and mental ill health. Try to reduce stress, for example through exercise, relaxation, or hobbies.
· Recognize the importance of protective factors, including exercise, leisure activities, and friendships. Try to ensure that these are not sacrificed to working longer hours, or try to ensure that you spend your spare time on these things.
Take your play as seriously as your work
2. How your workplace can help
Your workplace can also contribute to improving your work–life balance. Organisations should:
- promote the messages about work-life balance to individuals in the workplace
- Develop policies that acknowledge the association between work-related stress and mental health. These policies should also describe the roles and responsibilities of employees at all levels in the organisation in promoting mental health, and describe mechanisms to support staff who experience mental health problems
- Encourage a culture of openness about time constraints and workload. Employees must feel able to speak up if the demands placed on them are too great
- Give better training to managers so that they can spot stress, poor work–life balance, and its effects on the individual. They should also be trained to develop better systems to protect everyone in the workplace
- promote a culture of ‘working smart, not long’, as outlined above
- ensure that employees’ jobs are manageable within the time for which they are contracted
- audit their work environments to identify elements of practice, policy, or culture that may be detrimental to a healthy work-life balance
- regularly monitor and evaluate policies against performance indicators such as sickness, absence, and improvements in staff satisfaction
- allow staff to attend counseling and support services during working hours as they would for other medical appointments
- encourage activities that promote good mental health, for example, lunchtime exercise or relaxation classes
- Adopt technology. Advancement in technology has impacted even the most uncommon but necessary issue which is mental health. From digital well-being apps that let you know when you should take a screen break to new mental health startups, this industry is progressing rapidly, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to hybrid work.
Relax, relax and relax! One famous quote goes, ‘Don’t sweat so hard in life. You never make it out alive anyway”. The beauty of life is in enjoying the little wonders that life has given us e.g. sound of laughter, music, ocean waves, and rivers among others. Take time off to wind down and enjoy being alive in this universe.
In the words of Apostle Paul (1 Timothy 6:9)- a devout life does bring wealth, but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God. Since we entered the world penniless, if we have bread on the table and shoes on our feet, that’s enough. (msg)
Excerpts from the book ‘Life is not work, work is not life’ by Johnston & Smith
