According to leadingeffectively.com website recent research carried out by CCL (the Center for Creative Leadership) suggests that the metaphor of “balance” is not a good approach to the issue. The image of simply using scales in the sense of measuring the amount of time we spend working on one side and the amount of time we enjoy with our families on the other is neither an accurate nor a constructive conceptualization.
Can the balance be defined by equal hours?
If we accept this approach of considering work-life balance as an effort to balance a scale with two equal amounts of time, will always cause us to feel that our lives seem to be poorly balanced, unfulfilled and unhappy.
This approach is not the proper one. More important is whether you are able to do the things you want to do and have enough energy to do them. The amount of time is only one point of view.
Adam Grant in his book Give and Take argues that you can boost your energy and maintain it by doing things that actually affect you as something that importance for you. There is no need to count hours; the true approach is to think about what makes us feel energized, both in and out of work. The time you devote to these activities is far more important.
When we think about work-life balance in terms of equal hours, we arrive at an unsurprising finding. As the Always On, Never Done? Don’t Blame the Smartphone paper says: professionals usually work significantly longer than 8.25 hours a day from Monday to Friday. If we want an equal amount of time for work and for our private life these two intervals would be 8.25 hours each. When we add the time sleeping, 7.5 hours every day, that makes the 24-hour day.
However, many workers also spend a certain amount of time devoted to work during weekends. In total when we take into account both workdays and weekend, there are, on average, approximately 72 hours a week connected to work. That means there are only 43.5 hours left, the number of hours they can spend with our families every week. Therefore there is no time balance.
-jk-