Work Life Balance: from Work to Me

Welcome to Simple Productivity Blog! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. This will allow you to receive updates in your RSS reader every time new content is posted here. If you want to receive updates in your email, click on the envelope in the upper right corner, or use the "Subscribe" link below the blog title.

Please take some time to check out the content on the site. You may comment on any article by scrolling down and using the form at the bottom of all articles. Thanks for visiting!

Originally published 15 June 2006.

In an article I found over at Lifehacker.org, Adrian Savage talks about work-life balance, and how it is simply not going to be cured by policies.

Problems with the balance between the demands of profit-driven corporations and people’s need to live a satisfying life won’t be cured by policy statements and procedure manuals. That isn’t where the causes lie. They’re inside people’s heads: obsessive achievement drive, ambition gone mad, laughable greed for money and power, and blithe disregard of anything not linked to short-term results. … Work/life balance is an issue of civilization. It’s driven by simplistic, financially-derived goals, an unthinking ideology of “winner takes all,” and contempt for those unable to keep up. It’s the result of achievement motivation run wild.

As I look at how to balance my own life, part of it lies in figuring out what I want to do, and part lies in saying no. For after all, isn’t balance about saying yes as well as saying no?

As I look wistfully at those who live a very simply life with no need for outside employment, I wonder if I could do that? Would the very simplicity of the life drive me mad? Or is it possible to back away from the achievement to find a better balance? Perhaps exchanging less work and money for more free time? Where is it written in stone that we must work 40 hours or more a week?

Update 2007: After cutting back my work hours, I was able to escape the desperation I was feeling from having to spend so much time at work. It isn’t written in stone that we must work 40 hours a week, but it also isn’t easy to get there.