Читать книгу Leadership - Michael Heath, Michael Heath - Страница 15

Work-life balance has always been a big issue. Go back in history and you find that many people worked long and punishing hours. Look around the world and you’ll see the same lack of balance in many people’s lives. So what balance should we have?

If you have a problem getting the balance right, then I would point you to the website www.worklifebalance.com. They have three simple statements about this subject:

 Work-life balance does not mean an equal balance. Scheduling an equal number of hours for each of your various work and personal activities is unrealistic. Life should be more fluid than that.

 Your best individual work-life balance will vary over time, often on a daily basis. The right balance for you today will probably be different for you tomorrow. The right balance when you are single will be different if you have a partner or have children.

 There is no perfect, one-size fits all, balance you should be striving for. The best work-life balance is different for each of us because we all have different priorities and different lives.

one minute wonder How well balanced is the time you spend at both home and work? If work dominates, what home activities are suffering? How much do these activities enrich your life? When you’re on your deathbed, will you be grateful for the extra hours you put in at the office?

A wonderful boss I had when I was just starting work told me: “You never get something for nothing. Everything has a price.” Over the years his words have stayed with me. Do what you want to do, but be willing to pay the price for it.

The work-life balance website agrees: “Achievement and enjoyment are the front and back of the coin of value in life. You can’t have one without the other, no more than you can have a coin with only one side. Trying to live a one-sided life is why so many ‘successful’ people are not happy, or not nearly as happy as they should be.”

Yes, the organization and you have a responsibility to help employees achieve a balance. But we all have an individual responsibility to ourselves to ensure that our personal needs and wants are met.

A work-life balance will constantly change according to different factors in your home and working life.