I don't really care for the term work life balance; mainly because it implies that there is some magic formula that will suddenly bring peace, balance, and harmony to your chaotic life. I have not met anyone so far who has found this secret formula. The underlying assumption of work life balance is that you can do and have it all at once. Right now you should be enjoying a satisfying career, a full family life, and a hobby you love or so the message goes. Nothing in life really works that way though. We have been fooled by our consumer culture that life will be happier if we just ___ fill in the blank. We keep trying to fill in that blank with a wider range of things placing more and more on the scales of work life balance. The reality is that good things, things really worth having or achieving, almost always involve sacrifice and deliberate focus. Intentional planning is involved to determine the sequence of the small steps taken to move one closer to a goal. This contradicts what most mean by work life balance today.
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, recently said, "There's no such thing as work-life balance, there are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences." So the skill to learn here is, understanding our choices and the consequences they may have. We need to say "no" to a great many things and "yes" to only those things that refine our focus on what is important. The Olympic athlete says "no" to all of the choices that take her away from training. And she really only says "yes" to the training and short term pain it brings to move her toward her long term goal. The limiting, in the short run is worth the long term end gain. That is what we need in life, to limit or say "no" to the choices that are not important to us or take us away from our end goal. So we need to get into training and strengthen our ability to say "no". What makes it hard for you to say "no" to those things that are not important to you or do not move you toward your goal?
