Work Life Balance Does Not Lead to Success
You already know this if you’re a long-time reader of our blog. We think the concept of work-life balance is outdated.
Or perhaps it was ill-conceived from the start?
We don’t know. We do know that work-life balance doesn’t work for us. And the same goes for a lot of people we talk with.
It causes frustration. Guilt. Undue stress. It doesn’t lead to BIGG success.
BIGG success is life on your own terms. The terms you use to define your life are incredibly important.
Work-life integration
Moving beyond the term “work-life balance” has been an evolution for us. We started by thinking about work-life integration.
We still like this concept. However, its advantage is also its disadvantage.
You’re free from the guilt of being out-of-balance. But it can easily be an excuse for overindulging in part of your life or another.
At least that’s how it has worked for us.
Systems thinking
Your life is a system. You live it at work. You live it at home.
This was our next move. It’s on target.
But we didn’t go far enough in our thinking about it. Plus it doesn’t imply a benefit or a goal like work-life balance does.
Life sync
However, as a result of thinking about life as a system, we started thinking about another term.
So now, instead of work-life balance or work-life integration, we’re thinking about life sync.
According to The Free Dictionary, sync means harmony. Harmony is “a pleasing combination of elements in a whole.”
We like “life sync” for a number of reasons:
- as with work-life balance, the goal is clear
- we think harmony is a better goal than balance
- the separation between work and life is eliminated – it’s life sync, not work-life sync
We’re not beasts of burden part of the time and creatures of play the rest of the time. We’re human beings all the time.
We live our one life, our whole life, all of the time.
In fact, trouble can ensue when too much separation occurs between different areas of one’s life. You see people run full speed ahead into ethical dilemmas.
We like life sync. At least for now.
What do you think?
Image in this post from hvaldez1
