It’s Time to Rethink Work-Life Balance
The dated concept hasn’t evolved for the digital age
Work-life balance is a myth.
The version millennials have been sold — the mythical 50/50 split between our professional and personal lives — is positioned as a sort of North Star. But like most North Stars, it remains out of reach, not because of its high degree of difficulty, but because it isn’t based in a modern reality.
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.” Essentially, it’s the belief that our lives only have two facets and those two facets should remain separate, like church and state. Work-life balance suggests that every person’s life can be split into two neat halves; it assumes that the way we spend our time is easily quantifiable, that each of us possesses the surgical precision necessary to slice work out of the rest of our lives.
But in an increasingly connected digital world, dividing your life and priorities symmetrically is a messy, and frankly impossible, task. It might be easier to leave them entangled rather than exhaust yourself pulling them apart.
