The End of Work-Life Balance

Why we've got our language around work all wrong (and what we can do to fix it)

Not a lot of what I’m going to write in this blog today is very original. You’ll probably have heard it somewhere else before. Some of it will be themes I’ve built on in the past. Some of it is pretty obvious when you stop and think about.

Nevertheless, I think it’s worth writing, primarily because minds are a lot like the proverbial camel’s backs. It’s always the final straw that causes them to break. Not that I’m trying to break your brain. More like reformulate it? But that sounds a bit creepy…

Regular readers of my blog - hi! - will be wholly unsurprised to learn that we’re here today to talk about language. At this point, I normally quote Confucius at you like some mad, pretentious idiot (definitely not an accurate description). But by now, I’d expect you to have those words etched in your skin, so I won’t bother. You’ve got the point. Shape the language, shape the mind. Shape the mind, shape the world.

What I want to touch on is my old bug-bear of “work-life” balance. It’s a phrase we hear a lot. You’re looking for a new job? Don’t forget to mention work-life balance! Hate your boss? That’s because they probably give you a bad work-life balance, right?

Thing is, it’s not about work-life balance. The whole things a big, fat myth. Let me explain this in the simplest possible way.

Life is everything you do. Work is a subset of everything you do. Hence, these two things cannot be in balance with each other. See? It’s that simple.

By using the term work-life balance, we’re speaking in terms that suggest that work - you know, that thing you spend 24% of your week doing? - is somehow not part of your life. So, I guess, say goodbye to 24% of your time on this planet? Surely, that’s madness!

It’s like trying out a baking recipe that talks about the ratio of flour to cake. If you’re doing that, your going to end up with something very wrong. If you want your cake to come out looking like anything other than a soggy mess (and secure that ellusive Hollywood handshake), what you actually need is the ratio of flour to butter and flour to sugar

So - extending the metaphor way past breaking point - how do we cook ourselves up a delicious batch of cake called “life”?

Whatever you do, work heartily

Thus did St. Paul preach his epistles to the apostles. Specifically, Colossians 3:23-24.

As ever, the bible forms an excellent practical guide to modern living (assuming you put aside all those rules about animals and the general pillage/plunder vibes of the old testament - and definitely don’t take it’s advice on life expectancy!).

Work is everywhere in the bible. I’ll pick out another quote just to prove it to you:

In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.

That’s Proverbs 14:23. See? I could keep going but you’d probably get bored after the seventeenth or eighteenth quote. I’m also aware that I’m probably engaged in mere talk right now - poverty for me, I guess!

The point I’m making - and this is another common theme for me - is that this problem of work-life balance has basically been solved for the last two thousand years. But somehow we’re worse at it now than we were, like, a thousand years ago. So much for progress!

Here’s what I’m talking about. Let’s take a famous quote: God created the world in six days, and on the seventh day, he life’d.

You’ve probably heard it before. Because, you know, God worked for six days and then on the seventh he life’d. So he could, you know, get the right work-life balance. You know, the classic day of life. The sabbath. The life day. You know.

Wait, wait, wait - I think I got something wrong there. Ah yes! On the seventh day, he rested. What the bible concerns itself with is the balance between work and rest. And it’s not just in the old testament:

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

That’s Matthew 11:28. The language of work and rest is deeply embedded throughout the bible, and the final verdict is never quite clear. Sometimes it seems to suggest rest will literally kill you. And other times it just seems, you know, fine.

The point is, whatever balance you think you should strike, the correct axis isn’t between work and life, but rather work and rest. Some people will go for that protestant work ethic. Others are all about the leisure time benefits of capitalist bourgeois society (I’m looking at you, Keynes!).

And just to emphasise that this isn’t all about the bible boys:

He cultivates himself so as to give rest to others.

That’s Confucius. And here’s a little bit of Aristotle:

The end of labour is to gain leisure.

Putting aside hair-splitting on the leisure vs. rest axis, what’s clear is this: the ancient philosophers agreed that both work and rest/leisure were essential to a good life, and that they must be kept in balance with each other.

Are you going to deny ancient wisdom? Are you really? I didn’t think so.

Okay, great. Out with work-life, in with work-rest (or work-leisure, they’re similar enough). Job done. Right?

Hold your horses right there, mister!

Work is work and rest is rest. But when people talk about work-life balance, they’re not just talking about working and resting. They’re talking about another axis of life.

Let me introduce you to professional-personal balance. That’s right, maths nerds, we’ve got a bi-axial system!

It seems obvious to say it, but you don’t just work at “work”. You also work at home. Well, okay, some poeple do. You’re far more likely to do work at home if you’re a woman.¹ Maybe if we were better at acknowledge personal work, we could begin to change that?

Whether you’re filing taxes, cooking dinner, cleaning the dishes, hoovering the floors - all of these are forms of work, even if they don’t happen at “work”. The Jewish tradition understands it. When they rest on the Sabbath, they take that rest gosh darn seriously. They’re not just taking time off “work”. They’re taking time off work. No cooking, cleaning, driving, phoning. Everything is prohibited in the name of rest.

A follow-up question: who here works every hour of their job? No, no one? I didn’t think so.

Here’s a not very revealing confession: I’ve never worked eight continuous hours in my life. I struggle to last past three or four before my brain starts falling apart. You should see the state of my blog posts after more than an hour of typing!

All of us rest in our jobs. Whether that’s at lunch, enjoying a coffee, reading the papers, or going for a walk, we all need time out during our “working” day. That’s natural. It’s human. To perform our best in a professional setting, we need to cultivate our minds and bodies beyond just the task at hand. That’s a theme of ancient wisdom too. All of us must rest in our jobs, as well as work at them.

Just as a man, set on ploughing the field all day, cannot drive the oxen without break, so too a computer programmer, doing valiant battle with the debugger, cannot exercise his fingers without pause.

I’d honestly say the moments of rest I’ve taken on my job have been some of the most impactful. I’ve taken time to read blog posts and books in my down moments that have tranformed how I’ve thought about the work that I do in a way that adds compounding value for myself and the company.

You cannot separate the rest from “work”. And you cannot separate the work from “rest”.

And so I yield to you, humble reader, a new way of thinking about the division in your life. Not between work and life, as if work were not itself a part of your life, but instead between these two new axes. The division of work and rest, and the division of the professional and personal.

What’s the use of all this, though? Let me offer a few thoughts.

First of all, I think it’s important to highlight the value of rest at work. The modern world insists on maintaining the myth of the so-called “eight hour day” when no such thing exists. The division between work and rest is malleable. No one works eight straight productive hours a day.²

By calling out this myth, we can create a better working culture where people are honest about the real content of their daily lives. Think of this as schedule unpacking (unpacking in the conceptual sense). Not only is it good for people’s well-being, it’s good for business too. More honesty about how people actually spend their time leads to more realistic estimates on work timelines and therefore better prioritisation and planning efficiency.

Second of all, it’s important to highlight this (malleable) distinction between the professional and the personal. I should be clear I’m not some weird droid who believes in keeping them separate. I like spending time with my colleagues in non-professional settings like pubs and restaurants. I like getting to know who they are when they’re not coding/designing/product-ing. Heck, I’m even in a jazz band with some of them!

But I find I often conflate my job and my work. I find it all too easy to give myself completely to my job, forgetting that my working day doesn’t end when I leave the office. I still have food to cook, finances to sort out, dentist’s appointments to book.

By emphasising the dual axis, we highlight the role not just of personal rest but also of personal work in our lives. We reaffirm that life means doing work to look after ourselves, and this self-care - not in the sense of having a bath and eating a tub of ice-cream (fun as they are), but in the sense of looking after your affairs - is as important as grinding in the office, chatting with colleagues over coffee, and vegetating in front of the TV.

Naming things correctly helps us understand the world better. We’re not here only to balance work and life. We’re here to balance work and rest, and the professional and personal. By thinking in these wider terms, we can develop better relationships at work, support our partners more properly,³ feel more rested, improve our personal affairs, and be more effective at time management across all domains.

If this sounds good to you, I’d recommend you trying it out. Next time you think about work-life balance, stop yourself. Think about work and rest, professional and personal instead.

On the other hand, if it doesn’t sound good to you, no worries. Please ignore the millenia of wisdom I’ve presented to you here today (okay, you got me, I’m being more than a bit hyperbolic here - but isn’t that sometimes needed to shake people out of their old ways?).

Okay, now it’s time for you to take action. Let me know you views on work-life balance! Do you think it’s a good enough framework? Does hearing that phrase make your ears bleed with frustration? Let me know your thoughts.