Life in a Bubble

You may have heard me speak about this, or maybe you’ve read one of my articles about it… Life work balance.

More so a few years ago, but there was a time fairly recently that this was a buzz term – “you need to create life work balance”… even now, some of my clients come to me and say “I just need more life work balance”. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which way their scale is leaning – people don’t often say to me something like “you know Heidi, I think I’m living too much, I really need to work more”.

Now, here is what I think of “life work balance” – I think it’s a croc… we don’t need life work balance, we need balance – just balance.

Interestingly, I’ve looked up the definition of Balance – there are many, but mainly relating to accounting, computing, balance beams, tyre balance, equilibrium, chemistry and weight distribution. No where could I find a definition for balance about life. So, here is mine: balance is the art of managing your life so that your values are being met in all areas – work, friendships, family, money, health, etc.

If I could draw what an unbalanced life/work balance would look like it would be like this for most people:

 But – isn’t work just a part of life? Its not a separate entity is it? Well, maybe it is, but perhaps its not supposed to be? Maybe its supposed to be LIFE as the main aspect – and then there are subparts to life – like family, work, money, health, etc.  Maybe its supposed to look like this:

One thing I ask, if you do insist on continuing to use the term “work life balance” could you at least change it to “life work balance”?

Now – I invite you to take a step out of the bubble of life and swap it around – make LIFE priority number one and everything else comes after that!

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