Work-life balance is one of those things that can be interpreted in many different ways. Generally speaking, I find that balance not to be in a perfect 9-5, 50/50 kind of way, but in balancing the various parts of your life as needed.
Last year I shared Rory Vaden’s thought on this, where he said:
“Balance shouldn’t mean equal time spent on equal activities. Balance should mean appropriate time spent on critical priorities.”
More specifically, I find the idea of “intentional imbalance” to be a great way to live, where you build your day around the things you need to get done, which might mean your work day isn’t 9-5, but is instead it’s more like 8-10, 12-4, and 6-8. Whatever works best for you is generally the right way to do it.
In a recent podcast episode from GaryVee, he attacked the traditional 9-5 workday even harder, saying:
“Work-life balance to me is happiness on all equations.
When I hear my friends or acquaintances or people in social media say things like, I worked nine to five Monday through Friday. I had great work-life balance. And you ask them, do you like your job? No, no, no, I don’t like it at all.
I’m like, you don’t have work-life balance. You have 40 hours a week every week that you hate. That’s not balance, that’s tolerance.”
There are times in life when we all need to tolerate the work that we do, but hopefully it’s been short-lived for all of you. I worked at Hardee’s for a little while in my teens, and it was an awful job, but it’s what I had to do until I could find a job that was more fulfilling.
If you work 9-5 at a job that you hate, that’s a tough thing to try to “balance”. The more you can find a role that aligns with your strengths and desires, the more the balance can become intertwined with your day in a way that leads to Gary’s idea of “happiness on all equations”.
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