The Secret to Work-Life Balance
If you’ve been following along for a while with Sincerely, Sharon, you know that most times when I say that there’s a secret to something, the secret is usually that there’s no secret at all. Nothing different for “work-life balance” – working in corporate America full time for 1.5 years, I’ve learned it doesn’t exist. That being said, it might not be possible to 50/50 balance work and life, but it is possible to feel like you have control over both aspects of your life. Being in your 20s, whether you work full time or not, I feel like we can all relate to feeling out-of-control, overwhelmed, anxious, etc. So I’ve compiled this blog to share what I’ve learned about the outdated concept of work-life balance and what we could all stand to learn.
Sadly, work-life balance has become an elusive buzz-word problem, with 54% of Americans calling it a significant problem pre-pandemic, according to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2019). How many people can’t get a hold of their work-life balance today, after the majority of companies going remote and hybrid? 66% of Americans, according to Statista. But that’s not the only jarring statistic. Pause to consider the following (definitely heard that in Bill Nye’s voice):
· People who work 60 hours+ per week have a 23% higher chance of getting injured or sick
63% of Americans say they would choose better work-life flexibility over a salary bump
· 22% of people don’t do anything to improve their work-life balance.
· 46% of Americans consider themselves workaholics.
· Only 3% of surveyed people are looking to come back to the office 100% of the time.
· 92% of employees are regularly working during evenings and on weekends.
I think part of the problem surrounding balancing work and life is that it is set up as an attainable goal. In interviews, we are asked to describe times we “balanced multiple priorities at the same time”, so we scramble to get a hold of every aspect of our lives to keep them in check. On social media, we peek into the lives of others and wonder what we could do to “have it all”. It isn’t long before we usually discover that having it all is about as attainable as going to the grocery store these days and NOT having a mini heart attack when the cashier reads out your total.
I heard this metaphor this week that I really enjoyed and wanted to share. Life makes balancing priorities out to be a circus act of juggling as many balls at once as possible. In reality, though, not every ball we juggle looks the same. Some are plastic balls, and if those hit the ground, the effects are temporary and inconsequential. However, a few of the balls we juggle are glass balls, and if we drop those, we risk shattering them forever. Obviously, the ideal is to drop none of the balls – but with family, friends, life changes, and work, that is impossible. So it’s important to identify which kinds of balls they are, and prioritize the glass ones when you need to. Life will never be 50/50; there are days where work will need to take priority and days when life will need to, and the key is to stop shouldering guilt when you can’t get everything even all the time. Guilt – especially for young women, that is the number one obstacle to feeling in-control, because we typically have so much on our plates and are constantly told we can balance it all.
In reality, research on the subject claims all of us need to be taking breaks during our workdays, and need to be logging off at a reasonable time. There’s this old catchphrase I cling on to – and that’s that we need work to be able to rest and rest to be able to work. We know that the finance bros turned sales people love the expression “work hard, play hard”, but there’s actually evidence that supports that if you work hard during the week, you’ll be able to enjoy your weekends and nights a lot more because your constantly running brain will feel “deserved” to take some time off. That’s when the thoughts that never seem to stop will stop and let you finally feel at ease. Likewise, resting – which means no checking emails, no out of office memos that say to call on the cell, and no “one quick work thing” during off-time – is just as important to feeling ready to get back to the grind and not tapped out before you even clock in. The National Institute of Mental Health discusses in detail how sleep and rest are critical to regulating emotional well-being, social awareness, and productivity. In other words, the more you rest, the more prepared you will be to tackle the week! I always thought it was weird growing up how people hated Mondays so much, when I actually seemed to get the most done and under my belt on Mondays. It turns out they tend to be the most productive and predictable days in a week cycle. That’s not a coincidence that Mondays come the day after a few days of rest and comfort.
So go with the evidence. Work when you work, rest when you rest. Keep your emails on lock on weekends – nothing is that important. Plan in breaks when you can during the workday- a jog around the block, reading a book, listening to music, cooking, spending time with family and friends – so you can be more productive after the breaks. Engage in restful activities: meditation, yoga, a walk, or even keeping a journal (I do it and love it). Just don’t spend all your break time on your phone – that won’t leave you feeling well-rested, it will just burn a hole in your eyes by the end of the day and get you feeling off track.
So that clears up how to rest productively, but how does one work productively? I’m about the change your life with this strategy, called the Eisenhower matrix, on how to “take back your work life”. The Matrix looks like the following:
More Urgent Less Urgent
More Important Q1: Crisis Q2: Goal-Setting
Less Important Q3: Distraction Q4: Waste
Basically, it entertains that work tasks all are designated into one of the four quadrants based on their level of importance and urgency, therefore helping an individual prioritize which balls are glass and which are plastic (rather than grouping everything together as a must-do which is unrealistic).
Q1 is your crisis-mode, the things that come up that you can’t really plan for and that sometimes derail your full work schedule because they must take center stage. In your personal life, these might be the loss of a family member, a leak in your house, or a big personal event you’re planning for. At work, this might be a call from a client, a missed or inaccurate contract, a supply chain disaster, or a safety issue. These must come first, but the key to managing these is trying to stay one step ahead of the other quadrants to have as few things in the Q1 basket as possible.
Q3 tasks are distracting tasks that don’t often need to be done immediately, but they slip in because they’re quick or easy to do. What ends up happening is that in the morning, when we feel exhausted, we look at our work checklists and find that there are quick tasks on there like submitting our monthly expense report or replying to emails. None of these things are urgent, but in an effort to cross things off the list, we accurately prioritize those, saying we will leave the Q2 priorities for later. What actually happens? Later in the day, we lose the energy to do our Q2’s or Q1’s pop up that take up all the rest of our time. Therefore, the best thing you can do with the Q3’s is delegate or defer them to moments in the day where you have lulls and dips in energy to take the place of possible Q4’s you would do instead.
Q4 is the waste bucket, meaning it is busy work or work tasks that aren’t actively serving us well at all. Worse, it can also be mindless scrolling through our phones or staring aimlessly at our monitors feeling dead from the day. This bucket is inevitable based on the very unattainability of work-life balance, but the key is just to substitute these with Q3’s so you can feel productive whenever possible.
And finally, Q2’s – saving the best category for last. Quadrant two is reserved for tasks you have to actively plan and block off in your calendar to get done because otherwise, you feel these tasks always fall to the bottom, despite their extreme importance. These tasks include setting performance development review goals and reflecting on them, conducting discovery meetings with clients, and analyzing your business results. On a personal level, they may include checking in with loved ones and major milestone goals, like training to run a half marathon that you have long wanted to complete. It is easy to let these fall when Q1’s and Q3’s come up, but here is the key: the more time you spend in quadrant two, the more time you WILL spend in quadrant two. This may sound remarkably self-explanatory, but at its heart, it means that prioritizing important long-term goals will mean less crisis-mode interactions later on, less urgent breakdowns in your workday, and over time, less extreme stress exerted that makes you feel like giving up on work-life balance altogether.
I am going to wrap up with an interesting TedTalk that I really can’t recommend enough, entitled “How to Gain Control of your Free Time” by Laura Vanderkam. If you’re still reading along, I can’t recommend enough clicking here to watch the full video. In her talk, Vanderkam discusses her work studying remarkably busy people in the business field, looking at thousands of time diaries to answer the question - how do we build our lives so time saves itself? She covers work-life balance, explaining that it’s so elusive because we all view time as having the upper hand on us. Hundreds of times a day, people can be heard saying “ugh, if only I had a few more hours in the day”, like they’re drowning in their lack of control. She recommends shifting the narrative to realize that we each have 168 hours each week to spend whichever way we want and prioritize. Even with sleep and work, that leaves us 42 hours each week as free time to have an impact with. There is plenty of time for what matters and we don’t need to feel rushed or manipulated by time, when we are the ones who have the ability to manipulate it to what is important in each of our lives. THAT is the secret, if anything, to feeling in control over time.
Signing off for this week<3