Work Life Balance

Work life bal­ance. Sure­ly you’ve heard of it. For a while the idea of work life bal­ance was big. Com­pa­nies were even adver­tis­ing that they were seri­ous about help­ing employ­ees deter­mine a healthy work life bal­ance. The idea that we need to bal­ance our work and life may seem ide­al. How­ev­er good the inten­tions of the advo­cates of a healthy work life bal­ance may be, it’s actu­al­ly not ground­ed in real­i­ty. Work and life are not on oppo­site sides of a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion. We don’t mys­te­ri­ous­ly bal­ance this invis­i­ble equa­tion by remov­ing some work on one side in order to increase life on the oth­er. While math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tions do in fact work like that, life and work do not. Here are some risks asso­ci­at­ed with believ­ing this com­mon myth:

• If we treat work as a sep­a­rate enti­ty than life, then it quick­ly becomes our ene­my. If work is what we do for mon­ey and life is what we do while spend­ing the mon­ey, then we’ve cre­at­ed a real­i­ty that is unre­al­is­tic and unful­fill­ing. Why should our chil­dren work hard to study math if suc­cess means work­ing more? Work is not the oppo­site of life. It is a part of life and doing well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly opens up oppor­tu­ni­ties for your child. Thus edu­ca­tion means freedom.
• Work is not fun. This fol­lows from a sim­ple syl­lo­gism. If work is not life, and life is fun, then work is not fun. Au con­traire, work is a God-giv­en call­ing to stew­ard the earth that He gave us. God does­n’t give us bor­ing, mun­dane, no-fun work. We are the ones who take our God-ordained work and make it hor­ren­dous. Work should be ful­fill­ing, includ­ing your math home­work. Find the infi­nite God in your stud­ies of His lan­guage, learn some­thing hard, and be excit­ed that you did some­thing hard.
• Live more, work less. Let’s be hon­est, when some­one says “you need more work life bal­ance”. What they mean is, “you work too much.” If it’s called ‘work life bal­ance’, then why do we always seek to work less? Work is a nec­es­sary part of life and life would be short­ed by a lack of work. God is infi­nite and He has called us to work hard, pray hard, and trust Him. Our work can be fun. Our life can have pur­pose. Our trust is ground­ed in the infi­nite. Is it easy? Nope. But it’s total­ly worth it!

While try­ing to help our chil­dren devel­op a good work eth­ic, set­up a sched­ule, build good habits, and love God, let’s take a moment to check our­selves. Are we believ­ing the myths of this world? Are we build­ing a life worth living?