Work-Life Balance…Works Both Ways
There’s a prevalence of articles, videos, and social media posts flowing past my eyes daily that speak to the importance of work-life balance; almost always, they address doing what we can to keep work from infiltrating our non-work time. But the infiltration of me time into the work day is an issue too, often an overlooked one.
It makes sense for all workers to do whatever they can to maximize their time away from the office (virtual or not) and spend personal time addressing personal interests, including spending time with family and significant others. But if we’re going to cut the work interruptions out of our personal time, we need to pay attention to those personal interruptions that we’ve started to allow to creep into the work day, especially in the covid-driven virtual work environment.
We spend much more time, collectively, working from our homes or some location other than our offices or normal worksites. As a result, our work takes us closer to home, family, spouse, community, chores, errands, and the many other key priorities and activities that tend to round out our day. If I’m sitting in the office, I’m not going to go outside to see the kids off to the school bus, nor am I going to break away from the desk five times to check the front door for that package Amazon said would arrive today. But I may if I’m teleworking. Working at home with no co-workers around, maybe I’ll tend to check on VRBO vacation rentals, or this weekend’s NFL schedule, or a recipe to try tonight, all the while drifting away from what my employer is paying me to do. Drift-away potential is significantly higher in the telework environment than it is in the normal work environment (whatever normal looks or looked like) because we tend to work in a vacuum with no other eyes while teleworking.
This isn’t to suggest that the teleworking employee is predisposed to being a time-waster; the point is that we have to make barriers for ourselves and segment our time so that the 24 hours that make up our day are each used, more or less, for their intended purpose. X amount of hours for work, Y amount for personal, Z amount for sleep, and so on. Even if we need to set a schedule for our day (mentally, on paper, using a spreadsheet, or an app), if it works, do it. If you’re not sure if it’ll work, try it. But however you do it, blocking out the work day for work will make it easier to block the shifting sands of the workday out of time we should spend with loved ones or engaging in activities that have absolutely nothing to do with work. It’s this time that rounds us out and makes us the individuals or families or communities we desire so ardently to be.