You read about it a lot, you hear about it at work all the time, you must have work\life balance! I really struggle to understand what is meant by work\life balance? How does giving employees access to the corporate network 24/7 via blackberry devices, or remote connections equal work\life balance? I understand that these tools should mean I can shift where and where I work, but in reality all they do is increase the length of the work day (am I wrong?).
So it got me thinking, work\life, that to me suggested that work comes first and I need to balance my lifestyle around work. I want to start to change this, I am now starting to think about Life\Work. Lifestyle comes first, and I need to work out how to arrange work around that! This is a significant change in my thinking, rather then trying to fit my lifestyle around my work commitments, I now start to think how I can fit my work commitments around my lifestyle, the benefits are
-Work is starting to have boundaries. When I am at home, I don't work! (broke that one on Friday night, but that's the first time!).
- Given that work now has boundaries, and the time allocated to work is constrained, I need to priorities things better then in the past. I have always been reasonably good at this, but continue to get better.
- I need to delegate, and I do.
- When I am at work, I need to be efficient, use the tools that are available to me, and try to change the way others work when it makes me less efficient.
The goal, to have a better life\work balance, if I keep focusing on my lifestyle first I think this will make my work interactions better also given the behaviours it drive in my, lets see!
