Ray O’Neill

OPINION:

Work:Life Balance

The problem with talk of work/life balance is that it suggests that work and living are separate things, when in fact the balancing act is something much more integrated.

My name is Ray O’Neill, and I am a recovering workaholic. Of all addictions, perhaps this is more socially tolerated, for bringing remuneration and stronger professional recognition not only to myself, but to those I worked for and with. But, as in all addictions, the price to be paid somewhere was undoubtedly within my personal and social life. As with all addicts, I was more than willing to pay this price, because my addiction served me well as the perfect hiding place for so many questions, doubts and fears. My work life, no matter how stressful or consuming, was always easier to ‘manage’ and ‘control’ than a personal life involving people who could not so simply be scheduled, organised, or switched off.

A habit moves from casual diversion into a full-time addiction when firstly, the need for the escape becomes increasingly stronger, more impulsive or immediate; secondly, when there is no longer any enjoyment in the actual partaking of the ‘substance’ itself, only intensified anguish in not having it. Essentially, do you use the habit or get used by it?

It is worth asking do you use ‘work’ to achieve your ends, or do you feel used by work? Does work empower you in terms of confidence, achievement or even material/ financial/personal gain; or do you feel powerless within it?

The trouble with popular talk about work/life balance is that it establishes work and life as juxtaposed, as if working was somehow at variance to living. Given that at least one third of our life-times are given over to workplaces, why should this core ‘working’ part of our existences be set up as separate to our lives? It is work that can enable us to enjoy, either directly in of itself, or indirectly through the rewards it yields, financial or personal, allowing us to ‘enjoy’ elsewhere.

But most of us envy rather than enjoy; anxious that others are enjoying more or better than us, or fearing that we are being enjoyed by someone/something else. Globalised capitalism and has a knack of taking ‘enjoy-able’ ideas to make them ‘work’ for greater production, efficiency and ultimately profit. The weekend, 40 hour weeks, annual leave, bank holidays, sick pay, maternity leave; all have emerged and evolved not purely for human betterment and greater life ‘enjoyment’, but also for more profits. Fashionable multinational companies provide canteens, meal plans, sports, social events and groupings to bring our lives into the workplace because they know ‘happy’ workers make better workers. We all bottom for the bottom dollar’s profit, but we should always have choice as to whether we can or will enjoy this.

Similarly, recognising workplace diversity enables diverse workers ‘produce’ more, demonstrating how much our lives infiltrate the work place; not necessarily on opposite sides of a balance. Workplace diversity recognises that although we are at work, those significant markers of our lives, our race, class, gender, sexuality, bodies should not be left at the door but are expected, wanted, supported to be lived, respected and valued within our work places; so our workplaces are valued greater within us. There can be a mutual enjoyment where both sides profit.

I was surprised that top level recruiters in assessing people for positions don’t necessarily want the applicants with the best grades, or work experience, but increasingly those who evidence a personal life, hobbies, adventures, who took summers off or gap years, who volunteer. Why? Because they are least likely to burn out. Work is part of their lives, facilitating their living, but it is neither their whole existence, nor the opposite of their existence. They have something else to work on/with.

Similarly, it surprised me to learn the most respected workers with the most successful employment longevity are not those that get ‘all their work’ finished, because in modern offices there is always unlimited work; but those that finish work at their own set times. Modern work expectations are never that you finish your work, but that you discipline yourself to stop working. In the corporate sector, a good worker isn’t seen as one who clears their desk, so much as one who clears off from his desk when there is enough.

Not having boundaries or disciplining yourself to ‘leave’ leads to burn out, either in the workplace or outside of it. I see people exhaust themselves after work or over weekends because they need to ‘relax’, ‘have fun’ but so much of this down time is spent on uppers, sex, alcohol or drugs. It is too often people who work long hours that most need to ‘party’ long hours to make the work worthwhile, throwing themselves into weekends of after-parties and early houses facilitated by uppers and downers, which easily move from distraction to addiction, furthering exhaustion.

In many ways work carries similar relationship fantasies of being a lifetime relationship, a perfect career, a dream commitment. Perhaps I am of that last generation who believed in that myth. Nowadays people are more fluid around careers, commitments, possibilities. Some partner their work for life, until they retire; others move through job to job either in a lost serial monogamy or through garnering experience from each position which they learn though and carry with them onwards. There are the hopes, expectations, passions of those whose commitment to a job for life got worn down by drudgery, by mediocrity, by disappointment. Others do not seek professional commitments, others pursue polygamous employments. Different strokes for different folks.

Ideally work should hold something of our desire, our belief system, our heart; if not as an end in itself, at least a means to an end, in terms of a pay-off, allowing us have our lives. The key is not balance in opposition, but an integration of our lives, our passions, our desires into or around our work. Where in your life does something personal of you get met? This is supposed to happen in our personal lives, but the reality is that this doesn’t happen even those coupled. Work could be another place for us to be met, valued and appreciated, but again does this happen? And so, I seek other third spaces that are not about my work and not about my personal life, but yet are personal, important labours in which something of me gets met, appreciated enjoyed; be it exercise, education, volunteering, self-reflection.

Do you have time and space in your week each week that is about you, your heart, your happiness, your enjoyment that is authentic and not fuelled by addictions. Addictions only seek distraction, they can never find joy.