I recently read an article by Sean Ogle, one of my favorite bloggers, on what it means to have work life balance. His number two advice reads as follows:

Realize there doesn’t ALWAYS have to be a good balance. This is HUGE and something many people will not understand. In order to achieve the perfect work/life balance over the long term, you’ll face times where there is a significant lack of balance. You may have a few months leading up to a major product launch where you work 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Sure that isn’t sustainable over the long term, but hell, you’re building a business! Sacrifice has to be made. The sooner you accept that as your reality, the sooner you’ll stop stressing out about it and start making stuff happen.

For the most part, I do agree with this point. There are times in your life when work may take precedence over personal life, and that’s okay. When I’m getting in my writing groove, I can work long days without surfacing for air for weeks at a time. And, just as important, you sometimes need to completely break from work and decide to just go somewhere for a month. Sometimes the balance comes from the broader perspective, not from day to day.

Then I got to thinking about family. If you’re raising a young child, you may want to spend 50-60 hours a week at your job, but that simply is not feasible, even in the short term. Children don’t wait for you to “get out of the zone.”  They need constant parental care and love: someone to pick them up from school, feed them dinner, help with their homework, etc. While some parents have the luxury of either having a spouse stay-at-home or some sort of nanny care, not every parent has this luxury. Even further, you may want to have equal time work vs. personal life so you don’t miss out on your child’s growth.

So in the end, I realized that work life balance is a very personal thing. We all have to decide what that means to us personally.  It’s okay if your definition differs from someone else’s, even if you both work on the same team. Understanding the different definitions can help bring added strength and diversity to your company or organization. You just need to realize the term itself is up for interpretation and to plan accordingly.

-Deborah Fike

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