A Threshold to a Work-life Balance

published on The Global Filipino Magazine website on 21 January 2023

You are with your twin brother since the first day you officially engaged as an employee or entrepreneur. He follows you similar to how your shadow does as you keep your earthly stay. Some met theirs after college, and some during teenage years or even earlier. You call him the same way everybody does to their own—work.

Work is an element of man’s existence. At one part of your life, if not most, you inevitably engage in an undertaking that yields something in return. And you live by this every day. Waking up in the middle of a heavenly sleep, having breakfast with eyes half closed, throwing yourself out the flat, trudging through snail-paced lines, squeezing yourself into the train, digging into unending tasks at the workplace, chasing the daylight on your way home with a transport setup similar to that in the morning, taking dinner, and retiring to bed. Energy level: very low. What else can you do? Nothing but to sleep. Alas, your subconscious mind keeps on banging that you’ll face the same story on the next four or five days.

            In most cases, you can keep yourself out of this work-dominated life or, at least, improve your ways to let your interests have their way in your busy calendar. The ground rules to achieve work-life equilibrium are quite simple: preserve health, optimize time, go straight to the point, discipline. The following practices concretize these principles and set the cornerstones of your daily routine to give you your much-deserved, yours-anyhow time (at least a little) for your personal activities all towards setting your work and your life parallel.

            The first must-have to clinch work-life balance is adequate sleep. Yes, it is! It’s the cornerstone of every peaceful, joyful day and gives you that on-the-go drive all the way through as you plunge into your desired engagement. On one hand, a handful of slumber hours scatter your attention, reduce heedfulness, crumble sharpness, and make you crabby. All of these breed the germs of a bad day or, at least, an unsatisfactory one. You may dive into an activity with remarkable enthusiasm, unleashed excitement, and firing vigor, but there's a great possibility that all of these expire sooner than you expect. Your brain and body cannot endure and join your desire that long. You'll fizzle out. On the other hand, sufficient sleep thrusts you out the bed, propels your brain to action, taps your positive emotions, and programs your body to embark in whatever you plan to do. It gives you that feeling where you can nail every single thing that your mind wants to finish. In other words, adequate sleep shapes you internally to overcome all challenges ahead. Besides, health comes first, after all. With sufficient slumber, you’ll certainly engage in the desired activity in the optimum version of yourself. Want to spend the day to the fullest? Just hit the sack, and life begins in hours.

As to how many sleep hours needed to fill your battery depends on your own body. People differ from one another in almost all aspects, and duration of sleep is of no exception. In general, a person recharges for eight hours; however, psychologists say that this is not across the board. Some people repose for six hours, and some for seven. Ergo, how long to secure adequate sleep depends on your body, and the first person who can determine that is you.

The second instrument to keep work and life on the same ground is the use of a checklist. A checklist helps you to stay mindful, enregistered, and on track as to the tasks that need to be accomplished within the day or the coming days. Especially the urgent assignments. By keeping a checklist, you don’t let here-today-gone-tomorrow thoughts slip through your consciousness. They are prudently scribed and pinned as targets. Remember: a fading pen outweighs a sharp memory. That’s the rationale of a checklist.

How you do a checklist all depends on you. Of course. Only one rule exists here, though—write it down at once! As we recognize the paradox of memory—forgetting—to record the thought as soon as possible saves you from the misery of neglecting a work to do even if you already perceived it or it already landed on your mind. Just scribe the task as it pops up on your head. You can also write it down upon receipt (the moment your superior gives you the instruction or your colleague relays it to you).

By practice, I do only three actions in my checklist—write, cross out, asterisk. Once I execute the task I wrote, I’ll cross it out. As to the asterisk, I mark one beside a task deemed a priority.

Your notebook’s not with you? This isn’t a problem nowadays: our cellphones usually have default applications where free space for our personal notes can be found.

Still skeptical of a checklist relative to work-life balance? Let me tell you these. First, it helps you avoid staying at the workplace beyond business hours to finish things under normal circumstances because of forgotten assignments. While your colleagues are already home and having dinner with their family or in front of the T.V., you’re having your evening meal at the office in front of the hot monitor or laughing papers and, probably, alone (or, probably, not because a faceless woman in white watches you from a distance, planning to catch your attention as the clock ticks to midnight). Mathematically speaking, approximately 75% of your day goes to your work. The longer you stay, the more you’re robbed of your personal time and rest time. More importantly, a checklist keeps you away from allotting a portion of your precious day-off or vacation to get some things done for work. To me, this is more painful. Day-offs are workers’ personal days. These are the ceasefire! Family, books, shopping, laundry, study, sleep, whatever you want. Because you miss a task that must be fulfilled soon, you ought to cut these. On your personal day. All those said, tell me that checklists are no-brainer for work-life equilibrium.

Another technique to put your work and life in equal footing is to merge activities. This usually takes place in the workplace. It simply involves executing two activities in one given time without any compromise. In my previous job, I used to bike my way to and from the office almost every day. A trip measured roughly 6.5 kilometers. Multiplied by two, my daily biking journey was approximately 13 kilometers. Prior to that, I had allotted my Saturday or Sunday morning for jogging. Because of the biking activity I did almost every day, I didn’t need to dedicate at least three and a half hours of my rest day to exercise. (What’s more, I saved fare and contributed in the green campaign.) In the office, while awaiting the person on the other side of the line to pick up your call, you could close your eyes to give them a break after a tiresome exposure to the monitor or to brush off work pressure for a moment. You could also update your checklist or open E-mails. Raising to the 11th floor from the ground floor on the lift? Message a loved one to know how she’s doing or check out how many reactions your social media post gets. Need to bring some papers to another office? Head straightly to the cafeteria after that to take out some lunch. You could also drop by to your colleague’s work station along the way to inform him of something instead of reaching him through call or chat. I’m sure that you now have in mind some office activities that’re mergeable. Everyone has, certainly. By combining some things to do in a given span, you can optimize time and ensure that you’ll leave the workplace on time.

Next is establishing boundaries—those that clearly, intentionally, obligatorily, adamantly set your personal life apart from your official duties. You must know where and when work ends. Where. And when. Just because a certain task can be nailed within the day, even if it results in overtime, you’ll finish it anyhow. Wrong. Unless it’s that urgent, that one must be carried over to the next working day. You’re supposed to perform your official duties within work hours. If you break this rudiment, there comes a twofold consequence: you’ll tolerate yourself to be wishy-washy and reluctant during work hours ‘cause you subconsciously know that you can always extend in the office, and you step on yourself since you let work eat up the time that already belongs to you personally. All for the work. We know passion about work. We give our best. We undertake to produce the best outputs. And we take that inspirational—and nagging—extra mile. If it’s occasional, it’s fine. Hands down. We need to give up something to earn something; however, should this need to be endured all the days—such as extending in the office to accomplish as much as we can (especially if this isn’t paid), bringing tasks home, and allotting a portion of the weekend for work—like it’s already the company’s norm, it is downright amiss. A flat-out disrespect to your body, to your mental health, to your social life, and, probably, to your fam. Cut it out! We are not supposed and must not abuse and strip ourselves of value in the name of excellence, passion, and even promotion. In general, keep the sanctity of your work hours, and keep the sanctity of your personal time. Respect the boundaries except in case of an emergency.

Humans were designed to err. We are humans. Ergo, we were designed to err. We commit mistakes. In the same way, we encounter faults of others, inflicting us in some way. Either it’s our own blunder or our fellows’, we are emotionally affected by it. This shakes our work-life equilibrium. In response to this is the next technique—don’t squirm over setbacks. Perhaps, it’s better to call this resilience.

As we breathe, setbacks lurk in our lives. If it emanates from our end, we feel guilt, culpability, self-pity, self-conviction, shame. Self-esteem plummets to the toes. Should it come from our colleagues, we get annoyed, shake our heads, even laugh out the disappointment. Either way, we dwell in it subconsciously; it takes us some time to internalize the mess, to let corresponding emotions join our thoughts, and to see the light towards the end of the mentally-punitive tunnel. These emotions and flashbacks often cross to our off-duty life. Worse, they pollute our mood and set a gloomy day. As a result, we suffer; our personal life gets hurt. The setback strikes in bed time, while dinner, over the weekend, during idle time. This is precisely what we shun in the name of work-life balance—do not let one divide affect the other.

I remember a mantra of people enjoying their vacation and having fun in Las Vegas: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. For our purposes, we can wittily adopt it this way—what happens in the office stays in the office. This is easier said than done as emotions are an element of man. All the same, this is doable. It’s all mental discipline and determination to level work and personal time.

Let’s now talk about your personal time. Now that you already recharged your body with adequate sleep, a series of desired activities surely marches on you mind, each having its own pull to you. What will you do? I suggest only one thing—submit to your urge! There’s not another way of describing this but just by saying “Go for it!” Verbosely, dive into that thing in which you fervently want most. Most. Craving for a seaside bike ride? Go! Planning to explore the new action-figure store downtown? Go! Feeling gaga to watch that everybody-talks-about movie in cinema? Just go.

Shooting yourself to your yearning brings about binary good to you. First is refreshment. Diving into that activity for which you crave draws you from the helix of work. The memories, pressure, even rut associated to work fades away on your mind the best way possible. In other words, you legitimately run away from the shackles of your official duties and responsibilities as swiftly and effectively as possible. Another benefit this offers you is the chance to optimize your “me” time to your own satisfaction and fun. In the course of that mostly desired activity, you enjoy your time, your energy, yourself best. You let yourself have himself. Also, you won’t rue for not making the most out of your one or two day-offs. When the first work day drops, you’ll enter the office like a new person, free of work strains and, more importantly, regret. By acceding to your mostly desired activity during your personal time, your work won’t get weightier than your personal life in the balance scale.

I wish to mention out a few random things before we step onto the conclusion of this piece. First, all of the techniques elucidated above apply also to students, where work is the counterpart of studies and school is the equivalent of workplace. People (especially those who worked hard to acquire the lessons and to make it to the dean’s list) must admit that studying is equally draining and demanding as being employed; the only difference is that in work, it’s not about the grades you’ll earn but the money you’ll lose or the administrative consequences you’ll face. If assimilated and employed satisfactorily, students can have more rooms for their out-of-school and youth activities. The second thing I’d like to say is that blessed are those who have found the right job for themselves. It’s true that work that goes to one’s passion is no longer a work but a calling. A long, probably lifetime engagement that’s neither taxing nor dragging. You, guys, who are already into this kind of job, I clap to you in amazement and congratulation. You serve yourselves, and you traverse your desired life path with delight whilst earning and humming. Another floating thought of mine I wish to note is the notion of work over personal life in the course of employment. Verbosely, people commonly, though tacitly, embrace that work is superior to the worker’s personal life and time. People yield to the thinking that it’s totally fine if work eats up personal time. There are times when employees are impelled to render unpaid overtime services in order not to impair the operations of the company. That work intrudes personal life is perfectly normal to them. More specifically, in most cases, when work conflicts with your personal life, the latter must bend. I know you, dear reader, can relate or at least have a sense of this. I stressed earlier that you mustn’t let one divide affect the other, where work must not encroach into personal life and vice versa. This must be—this is the theory. You know that. As you get employed, and as you stay employed, however, you’ll see how people cling to the superiority of work as the professional norm and the unspoken code of conduct. Worse, the inverse intrusion—personal life gets into your work—is abhorred. If you do that, you’ll be labelled as unprofessional, detrimental to the company, a germ whose adverse conduct infects that of, and spreads to, colleagues. If you hold on to this inclination, the human resources department, with the indorsement of your immediate superior (the one who instructs you [expressly or impliedly] to stay beyond work hours or to finish things at home), will send you a letter that kicks you out the company for unethical conduct or misbehavior. Pretty unfair, huh? The next thought I wish to express is that there are professions that seem not susceptible to complete work-life balance. Examples are medicine, media, government service, and rescue. I cannot give a word about this with confidence, but I just think that 100% work-life balance in these professions is still within reach. Adoption of work shifts and admission of part-timers are some recourses. The last thing I intend to say is that our jobs do not and must not come as though they were the sole purpose why we live. Ultimately, we work to serve ourselves—our interests, our desires, our hobbies, our health, our personal and familial obligations, our dreams. This must not, at all costs, equate to the other way around—living to work. We throw ourselves to the field to achieve the living conditions we want for ourselves and loved ones. We perspire and squeeze ourselves to keep the lifestyle we choose. We rack our brains in generating and juggling ideas to grow our savings towards purchasing that high-end cellphone, premium television set, lovely car, or elegant house. We stretch muscles and crack bones to send ourselves to graduate school or training institution and to provide offspring fancy education. That is the purpose of work—to capacitate us to get what we want. It’s just a ticket, a tool, an instrument. Accordingly, it must not enslave us nor be superior to us nor dictate us.

           Work is a component of human existence. It demands time and energy, and it connotes betaking and plunging yourself into the circumstances of the job. Notwithstanding its entrenched seat in your life and the necessity to engage into it, work, similar to all other things, has proper setting. It must not tap you any time of your awake hours for attention like a toddler does to his parents. The techniques elucidated above constitute a practical, concrete recommendation as you carry out your tasks in the corporate battlefield whilst clinching work-life balance, tips that enhance your maneuvers and shape your decisions when the rubber hits the road. All these collectively embody the ABCs of securing that desired equilibrium—health preservation, time optimization, straight-to-the-point decision, and discipline. Remember: you’re the master of your time and energy. However necessary for you to earn, you’re entitled to good times and pleasure and rest. Accordingly, put your work in the proper box so you can let yourself have himself.