The pandemic brought a paradigm shift in the work culture, shaking the work - life balance working professionals experienced. The working population exchanges their time and effort for a salary, the greater the quantity and quality of the time you spend working, the higher your potential and capacity to earn. But this comes at the cost of your personal life. It impacts your health, your relationships and the quality of life that you enjoy in your time away from the office.

So can one achieve a balance between one’s work and one’s personal life? Is it a dream or can this really be achieved? Let’s explore some unique perspectives to bring to light the nuances associated with understanding and improving your work - life balance.

Developing work-life balance

The present culture and modern lifestyle demands progress, and one popular and quantifiable measure of progress is the income an individual earns. The greater the value or results that one produces, the greater one’s income. A salary in modern society has come to represent one’s worth and this is a reality, regardless of whether it is right or wrong.

It is also logical to conclude that the more you enjoy what you do, the greater your chances are of being able to elevate your income. It requires deploying the use of your strengths, things that you are predisposed to be good at. Furthermore, if you work with people you like and respect, your ability to do great work increases, which in turn leads to creating an impact and gaining the professional satisfaction that comes from doing excellent work.

But these two forces are at odds with each other if viewed from the lens of time. While more time invested at work helps produce results faster, especially if the quality of the work is high and leads to a greater sense of professional fulfillment; in turn it leaves less time both in terms of quality and quantity to live your life. For most people, their work is a part of their life, and not the other way round. So the traditional perception of the dynamic between one’s personal and professional life with regard to time is a win - lose dynamic. These are the two sides of the career coin, namely your remuneration and your professional satisfaction.

Instead of looking at the balance between your personal and professional life as a trade off, a shift in perspective is needed. The third side to your career coin is its edge – that edge represents your work - life balance. The true relationship between these three variables is that when you work hard to increase your capacity and your earnings, your increased resources (greater salary) allow you to create the infrastructure and support mechanisms around your life. Therefore, a work - life balance is not an oxymoron, it can truly be achieved.

Pursuing work-life balance

Balance has to be pursued. There are times in one’s career when one is more able to put in the effort required to create a greater sense of balance. So the real question is in which stage of one’s career is it most conducive to build a better equilibrium between one’s personal and professional spheres?

Early on in one’s career, from when one starts working, through the first decade approximately, one can devote the time needed to build towards a stronger income, and really settle into an industry where one works with a sense of passion. To get this stage right, one fundamentally needs to have a personal awareness of what one enjoys doing and can sustainably do for a long period of time. The problem is most aspirants come to this crossroads when they step into the real world without a fully developed sense of what it is they want to really do. And thereby they land up choosing a career based on what is hot at the moment, or worse out of some form of pressure, may it be parental, or peer or even societal pressure.

The mid - stage career professional needs to have built a certain sense of balance by putting in the work in the early stage, otherwise they begin to experience a mid-career life crisis, where they wonder if their best years are behind them. They are not energized by their work and their head and heart are disengaged from the game. Yet, they have financial obligations so to be able to maintain their pay cheque they fall into this trap where they do the bare minimum to stay employed. As a result, the zeal they once had has eroded and now they experience confusion and alienation with regard to their professional endeavors. This stage of life is also one where family responsibilities begin to demand time - young children, ageing parents, and growing professional expectations can create a deadly catch from where one can find it incredibly difficult to escape. Building the right foundation in the early stages pays dividends in this mid - stage as it further allows one to accelerate one’s career progression.

Moving onto what senior professionals are faced with, one notices that they want to be valued for their life experience, their subject matter knowledge, their interpersonal skills and their wisdom. They want to lead the complex projects and the teams that will execute on these activities. And again they have an opportunity to do so since the kids are now grown up and have left home. But if they did not get the momentum building middle years right, then they never reach this stage. Well-begun is truly half done when it comes to careers!

In conclusion:

Your career is your responsibility. No one else wakes up intending to make you a champion of your career or even your life. You are going to spend the majority of your waking hours at work, and unfortunately learning how to build an exceptional career is not taught in the formal system of education. Mastering how to choose the right job, and then secure it, is not an optional skill for most of us, it is a necessary skill in today’s world.