Every time I hear the term “work-life balance”, I picture a seesaw with work on one side and all the rest of life on the other.  We accept this concept as a reality, as a given.  We suggest that accepting this “fact” is a sign of maturity and adulthood.

But, to me it is such an unbalanced concept.  It is telling us that work is separate from life, not an integrated part of it.  It means work is the priority and everything else must be prioritized on the life side – one’s significant other, siblings, parents, friends, hobbies, and chores, sleep – everything else has to be prioritized on the “life” side.  In other words, work gets 50% and all the rest of life gets the other 50%.

I cannot see how it is possible to actually balance all of life into the hours allocated to it.  For example, if you are lucky enough to have a ten-hour workday (two hour commute, lunch, seven hours of work), then you are left with 14 hours for everything else.  If you follow the recommendations of health professionals then you need eight hours for sleep, leaving six hours one’s significant other, siblings, parents, friends, hobbies, and chores (food shopping, laundry, exercising).  Let’s face it, for most of us, “life” time is further curtailed by our constant connection to work, where we are expected to check our emails/texts from our employer or, as salaried employees, we are expected to bring work home with us (literally or emotionally).  Clearly, that imbalance is what is causing frustration, dissatisfaction, and stress in our relationships. 

I often wonder why we consider work separate from life rather than a part of it. Perhaps sociologists are right and that work has created such alienation that we no longer feel connected to it.  This seems like a reasonable explanation of why we accept the idea that there is work and there is the rest of life. 

Is this the best way for us to think about our day, though?

What if the term were changed to life-work balance? What would our lives look like then?  I won’t list out what I think it would look like; but I do hope you take a moment to fantasize about it.

What if it were simply life balance?  What if we placed life in the center of the seesaw and we were able to rearrange the parts on a daily basis giving priority where it felt right/needed/ genuine? 

I hope you are fantasizing about what life would look like if life were at the center and work was simply one of the priorities we had.  That seems so much healthier to me.

Categories determine the way we think about the world.  Perhaps it is time to change the way we categorize work-life.  I certainly think it is.