Forget Work-Life Balance. Time to Find Work-Life Integration
Facing the Truth
How many times have you heard a friend, family member or a colleague complain about their “work-life balance”? It’s probably one of the most common statement you hear from people. They work too hard at their job and have very little time to enjoy life. They don’t have enough time to be with their family, barely get to do the things they enjoy and find themselves tired all the time.
Well, obviously this is a problem. But it’s not the fact that people work too much and barely have any free time. The real problem is their expectation of “work-life balance.” The reality is that there is no such thing as balancing life and work – and having this expectation is making people unhappy. Can you guess what is the number one cause of unhappiness? It’s having expectations. Most of the time, those expectations aren’t met. So now people walk around carrying baggage because of it.
Most of you will hate hearing this, but the truth is that work-life balance is a myth. No matter how hard you try, work will always get into your personal life, somehow some way. So, by letting go of the expectation of work-life balance, you instantly free yourself from an automatic negative thought that takes away from your mental clarity. No more ANTS (automatic negative thoughts). It’s time to achieve work-life integration.
Are you doing what you love?
The fact of the matter is, expecting for a job that you personally chose to be in to “balance” itself out with the rest of your life is a false illusion. What it really comes down to, is how much you value your work and how much it really fulfills you. If your work is fulfilling and you truly enjoy what you do, then you will be perfectly fine working 40, 50 or 60 hours per week.
First, you must decide if you are in the right job or not. If you are an entrepreneur or business owner, then hopefully you actually wanted it. We know of countless entrepreneurs who, deep down inside, didn’t truly want what they currently have. This is common when money is your only goal. If making money is your ultimate purpose, when times get difficult, you’ll simply hate your life. If you have a far bigger purpose that you are passionate about, getting through difficult times won’t be anywhere near as miserable and you’ll be way less likely to quit.
So, are you doing what you love? If not, find out what you need to do to get there. It may be to hold onto your current job in the meantime while applying to dozens of others that are more aligned with your interests. It could be that you’re in the wrong career and you need to switch careers. Maybe your business doesn’t serve your dream customers, so now you need to develop a plan to pivot your product or service to appeal to the exact type of person you’d like to service.
Whatever it is, work-life integration starts with you setting aside the proper amount of time to sit down, reflect and really think about your current job situation. Write down a plan for you to work at a job or run a business that truly aligns with your interests and in which you have the most potential to contribute to something you believe in - making yourself even more valuable within the particular industry you’re in or wish to be in.
The Ultimate tool For Personal Growth
Considering that now you’re doing something you truly enjoy and see yourself growing in, you should be more than okay with your line of work spilling over into your personal life. In fact, now you’re a lot closer to having it integrate with your life. It’s time to start looking at every single day as an opportunity for growth – for which you must pay your dues each and every day. Now you should have the expectation that with each day there could be unexpected extra time you need to put in, or some difficult challenge you need to overcome.
Or you might not be able to go grab drinks with your friends because you won’t be finished with a long project that you’re working on. Now, instead of complaining about “work-life balance” you’re accepting that any unwanted occurrence is simply just another opportunity to condition your mind and train yourself to trust the process because it’s contributing to your personal growth. Each minor or major challenge, extra time put in or prompt response you need to give people relating to work outside of normal hours is all something that is making you better and better at what you do.
You will never complain about “work-life balance” if the work that you do is giving you a lot more in return than just a paycheck, no matter how tedious the tasks can be at times and no matter how many extra hours you need to put in. Allowing work to integrate with your life is the ultimate tool for personal growth, because now every day becomes a new opportunity to achieve excellence. And as human beings, we should all strive for excellence, shouldn’t we? That’s the only way to make this life meaningful. Do you think the most successful businessmen, entrepreneurs, artists, architects, engineers or Doctors throughout history ever complained about work-life balance? Probably not. They allowed their work to integrate with their lives.
Organize Your Free Time to Prioritize What Matters Most
Whether it’s having a hobby, traveling, spending time with your family or chilling at the beach drinking a Corona, you can now start controlling the amount of time you want to put into your favorite things. The key is to create time blocks for the things you love (which you should also be doing for your work). Many times, you will be able to do things you love throughout your workday by taking small breaks and allowing some extra time for yourself even if it is just for fifteen minutes at a time.
If you know that you can be done working anywhere from 6:30pm – 7:30:pm, when your job is supposed to end at 5:00pm, then don’t commit to anything during those hours. Don’t plan your time block to begin during this window because you never know if you’ll have extra tasks to finish for the day or if a project that you’re working on might run longer. It’s important to always have a time window in mind for any “miscellaneous occurrences”.
Then, you can plan your time from 7:30pm – 10:30pm to prioritize what you enjoy doing. That’s three whole hours every evening to go to the gym, have dinner with your family, go bowling with your friends or go on a date. If you work until late in the evening every day and don’t even have two hours to spare, it’s perfectly fine because you chose that job and chances are you prioritize it over doing things you enjoy during the week. You’re clearly getting rewarded for it and you’re okay with working late into the evening.
Whether or not you have the weekends off, use this time wisely. Instead of going out drinking and sleeping in every weekend, you will find it extremely beneficial to wake up earlier and work on yourself for a bit before having fun. This could include doing certain activities with the people you want to be around or getting better at something you love doing. It could be opening up a book or reading industry-related articles for an hour. Organize your time so that you’re also productive on weekends, and then reward yourself to doing the things you love. Do this and time will feel like it’s going by a whole lot slower, because now you’re truly making the most out of your day.
Most people are unhappy because they don’t organize their time, and therefore they don’t have control over their day. They wake up with no plan and then later they find themselves asking, “where did my day go?” It’s no surprise that people who complain about work-life balance use the weekend to “destress” or “decompress” from their stressful week. They either go out late and sleep in the next day and then binge-watch Netflix for the rest of the day or only care about having fun through the entire forty-eight hours of the weekend. Then, they wake up Monday morning feeling depressed. Obviously, if your whole weekend is spent blasting your brain with hits of dopamine and you do absolutely nothing productive, your Monday morning routine is going to feel miserable.
So, the key is to start planning your days ahead of time and know exactly what you want to be doing at different times, and if plans with friends tend to come up then write down the times that you need to be finished with everything else to be able to meet with your friends. Having more control over your time and not just doing things as they come up throughout the day creates a bigger feeling of satisfaction while knowing you’re freed up – helping you integrate life with work.
Conclusion
Now you know that work-life balance is a complete myth that only makes people unhappy. It’s best never to have any expectations about anything. Instead, realize that extra work and long hours is necessary for self-growth within something that you want to become great at, because it truly means something to you and allowing it to integrate with your life is the fast road to success in what you want.
Once again, remember all of the successful people who are alive today and who came before us. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have built Apple if he didn’t allow his work to integrate with his life. You wouldn’t see any of the good Leonardo DiCaprio movies if he was looking for “work-life balance”. The successful business owner of your favorite bar around the corner never complains about how much bottle inventory he needs to count for the month.
Even the Instagram influencers with large glutes that you follow are constantly planning and finding ways to get more engagement on their posts and get more followers. They’re constantly thinking of ways to make themselves look better and better on Instagram for their next post and no matter where they go or what they’re currently doing, that next post or piece of content for the week is going to linger in the back of their minds. Becoming instafamous, as we’ve all seen, fully requires you to integrate your life with what you do.
So, go out, make sure you’re doing what you love, be okay with the extra time and work you’ll need to put in day in and day out, enjoy the process because it’s helping you grow and finally organize your free time accordingly so that you never miss out on the things that matter to you.How many times have you heard a friend, family member or a colleague complain about their “work-life balance”? It’s probably one of the most common statement you hear from people. They work too hard at their job and have very little time to enjoy life. They don’t have enough time to be with their family, barely get to do the things they enjoy and find themselves tired all the time.
Well, obviously this is a problem. But it’s not the fact that people work too much and barely have any free time. The real problem is their expectation of “work-life balance.” The reality is that there is no such thing as balancing life and work – and having this expectation is making people unhappy. Can you guess what is the number one cause of unhappiness? It’s having expectations. Most of the time, those expectations aren’t met. So now people walk around carrying baggage because of it.
Most of you will hate hearing this, but the truth is that work-life balance is a myth. No matter how hard you try, work will always get into your personal life, somehow some way. So, by letting go of the expectation of work-life balance, you instantly free yourself from an automatic negative thought that takes away from your mental clarity. No mor ANTS (automatic negative thoughts). It’s time to achieve work-life integration.