The Truth About Work-Life Balance

What I learned about life balance through the pain of burnout

Do you feel you have a good work-life balance?

Very few people answer this question with a confident yes. But then, what do people actually mean when they talk about work-life balance? It is certainly a challenge we care about.

Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People says: “The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the significant struggles faced by modern man”

And by modern man, we certainly mean modern woman too! Arguably, the expectations on ‘the modern woman’ — and the unrealistic ideal of having the perfect career and the perfect family — are often more extreme than the expectations on men.

But when we talk of work-life balance it is not actually a binary problem. We don’t have a set of scales with ‘work’ at one end and ‘life’ at the other. As Sheryl Sandberg notes:

“Framing the issue of work-life balance — as if the two were dramatically opposed — practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?”

Sheryl Sandberg

So when people talk about work-life balance, what they actually mean is balance across all the areas of life, work…