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- #Work life balance definitions manual#
- #Work life balance definitions professional#
- #Work life balance definitions free#
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Of course, the professionals we talked to all led very busy lives. This life-changing event was the impetus she needed to take a step back, become aware of the mismatch between her current situation and her personal priorities, and begin to denormalize her habit of working long hours. She recognized that while the idea of “ must work, must work, must work” had been “indoctrinated into ,” she was now aware of the “clash” between this idea and “where was now” as a mother. Similarly, legal partner Kate told us that following the birth of her son, she experienced a major mental shift. So, I think from then on, I have taken a real step back. I thought, I am not doing this anymore, this is ridiculous. “ I was working quite long hours … it was a horrible sort of period … And I think for me, that was the key point. It was only at this point that she was able to recognize the toll her overwork had been taking on her family - and on her own mental and physical health: Take a step back and ask yourself: What is currently causing me stress, unbalance, or dissatisfaction? How are these circumstances affecting how I perform and engage with my job? How are they impacting my personal life? What am I prioritizing? What am I sacrificing? What is getting lost? Only after you take a mental pause and acknowledge these factors can you begin to tackle them.įor instance, after several years of intense focus on her career, Maya*, a senior associate at a law firm, described feeling like she’d hit rock bottom. This cycle is made up of five distinct steps: 1.
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Importantly, our research suggests that this is not a one-time fix, but rather, a cycle that we must engage in continuously as our circumstances and priorities evolve.
#Work life balance definitions professional#
While the details of every individual case differed, our study suggested a common mental process that consistently helped this group of professionals to change the way they worked - and lived - for the better.Īt a high level, our research showed that achieving better balance between professional and personal priorities boils down to a combination of reflexivity - or questioning assumptions to increase self-awareness - and intentional role redefinition. However, about 30% of the men and 50% of women in our sample appeared to consciously resist working long hours, describing a variety of strategies they developed for maintaining a healthier work-life balance. The majority of the interviewees described their jobs as highly demanding, exhausting, and chaotic, and they seemed to take for granted that working long hours was necessary for their professional success. We spoke with an equal number of men and women, and most of the interviewees were between 30 and 50 years old, with at least one dependent child, and in either middle or senior management roles. To explore this question, we conducted almost 200 in-depth interviews with 78 professionals from the London offices of a global law firm and an accounting firm.
#Work life balance definitions free#
What does it take to free yourself from these unhealthy patterns and reach a more sustainable, rewarding work-life balance? It's fair to say the played a role, a lot of the goals that we have were thrown into a clearer light once we were working from home and everybody's work-life balance got destroyed.Despite the resounding evidence that working long hours can be harmful to both employees and employers, many professionals still struggle to overcome their assumptions - and their deeply-ingrained habits - around work hours. The phrase work-life balance applies to two separate things that you're trading off between, and for me they all sort of mold into one, it's not like work ever really ends. We're fighting for the ability to have some say over our profession and the work life balance.
#Work life balance definitions manual#
Work-life balance, job variety and the level of autonomy are other significant drivers, there is a clear distinction in happiness between white and blue collar jobs with managers or professionals evaluating the quality of their lives at a much higher level than those in manual labor jobs even controlling for any possible confounding factors. The freedom of being able to make your own way outweighs the safety of a paycheck. We saw our parents work hard all of their lives and still not be able to retire, for us, work-life balance is more than a hot button.
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Examples of work life balance in a Sentence
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