Life experience -Let’s talk about work life balance
I had decided to try to write a blog at least once a month and for a little while I was on track. But then things started becoming very difficult to get time for anything else than work and the bare minimum of personal life.
Covid allowed us to review and pause our lives and I had promised myself that I would use that experience to make sure that my life would not go back at being completely crazy and out of control.
But a year within the “end of the pandemic” I am back at chasing my tail to get anything done.
When work takes over…
So I am very lucky to have a job that I love. I rarely wake up and resent going to work. But this year has been challenging.
I got up now and then when the amount of work was so vast that it was discouraging and overwhelming to get out of bed.
I would try to get the work done by reducing my lunch time, starting earlier and finishing later…eventually I started cancelling or reducing holidays as there was always an emergency or something showing up.
For a while even this was fine but eventually the pressure at work makes that even working extra hours is just not enough and you need having to spend a week a month clearing the decks by working 16 hours a day during that week just to get back to your normal workload but then by week 3, the same amount of work has accumulated again. So this one week as an exception becomes a regular item of your life.
As mentioned, doing this for a month is fine but when this becomes a routine then you have a real problem on your hand because your work becomes your life, your children do not know what you look like anymore and you are getting behind on every other aspect of your daily life.
This adds up to your stress and juggling more and more with your time spent and the craziness.
People around you start burning out, so you need to get your work done and the work of people who are off sick, so that workload becomes Mount Everest and swallows you.
Photo by Lucas Suárez: https://www.pexels.com
How to restore your balance
Obviously, you need to actually take the time to reflect because when you eat, sleep and live work, you cannot see an exit.
So you need to get one more push, one more crazy week where you reset your time before actually taking some time off. Hopefully planned time off and not sick time off….and you go for it…
Indeed, you need to trust your team that they will have your back and that nothing will explode when you are gone.
But honestly, this should never be a question, as nothing should never rely on one person only, we need to remind ourselves that cemeteries are full of indispensable people.
We all want to believe that indeed we are that important and that indispensable but is it really ever true?
Having a rain check on reality is good, getting your humble hat back on.
Go on holidays, take that time off and realise that the company you work for has not fallen apart.
You might have a very important work, but in the end someone should always be able to handle a few days of you being gone, otherwise something has to change.
But you are key to that change.
Will people die if you delay answering an email to tomorrow?
Most of the time, the answer is “NO” ….so stop putting your life on hold for something that could put you aside without blinking.
Again, we all want to believe that we are respected, admired and needed by our company and hopefully we are…but how many people were just put aside when covid hit.
One day an essential part of the team, the following day on hold until we know more and for some let go after a few months.
It is the hard reality; we all want to be indispensable but in the end what we are is comfortable.
The company is comfortable as they have a reliable person
You are comfortable as…
you are doing something that you are familiar with
you get your monthly reward
you can plan your life from one end of the year to another
Photo by Olga Mironova: https://www.pexels.com
Losing your sense of time
That all important word that people forget all the time….see what I did here LOL
Back being serious though, they are so many philosophical quotes about time and mindfulness has become such a major tendency of the last 20 years for a reason.
People do not leave in the moment anymore, it is rush rush to get work done, rush to have lunch….
Evolution of how we perceive time since the invention of social media and beyond.
Before television, people had books and in order to know a story they had to read a book, this was taking dedicated time and time spent to get to the end of the story.
Television and movies happened, now a story could be told in a few hours, some people would not bother reading the book and wait for the movie to come out, why spend 20 hours reading when you could only get the “Same result” in 2 hours.
Television program started, so there would be dedicated time frame when you could see a movie or an episode but if you missed it that was it, it was a great option for families and friends to get together at a specific time.
VHS and recording devices happened, you were not stuck anymore to miss a program if you were on holidays or working late.
Streaming programs were developed, no need to be present or for a large bulky VHS or DVD collection anymore, you could just download the movies or series anytime you wanted.,
Binge series watching has become the norm, very few people now watch one episode at a time, they wait for the whole series to be available before watching it.
No more decades of the same characters as we had for original Dynasty, Dallas…
Now, we get used to a character, but the audience is not watching so the series is cancelled as rating not as good as expected, sometimes you do not even get a full series and the series end middle as the rating once again is not what is expected.
You need to get immediate reaction otherwise people move on.
Twitter, tell what you think in 40 characters or less…..instagram 60 seconds videos, tiktok 10 to 35 seconds vidoes.
The average concentration spams since to be reducing more and more, in order to be appealing you have less than 10 seconds to make your point,
People spend hours sliding stories on their phone, I am not sure that anyone can tell you anything about those few hours after that, but they cannot call their friends or meet their friends…. virtual friends are taking over.
I am not against technology, but I questioned if people actually realise how to spend quality time anymore with one another?
Photo by fauxels: https://www.pexels.com
Taking the time
As mentioned, mindfulness has become a new hobby to take part in.
Being present should not even be something that you need to think about, but it seems that people need to learn how to do that again.
Families do not talk to one another anymore except via text or WhatsApp.
People cannot show up to your birthday, or anniversary, or wedding….but will come to your funeral.
There was a brilliant advertisement a few years ago where a man sends a funeral notice to his children and grandchildren who could not come for Christmas, and they all showed up to find him well and alive.
This is unfortunately so typical of our new way of living; you give more time to those 20 seconds videos rather than sitting with your family and having a chat.
You want to plan holidays, but work is always more important, so you never book your holidays and end up missing out or losing that time.
Life is too short for wrong priorities, but this is all nice and tidy on a piece of paper.
Life is complicated and we all have our way of coping.
What if someone way of coping is cleaning, another one is running or doing sport, another one is drawing or reading, or watching U-tub videos or scrolling your phone or playing video games….is there a right or wrong way to spend time?
Should time be spent or enjoyed?
Is someone dedicating time to an activity which is not yours a waste of time or quality time?
Maybe being respectful and understanding of other priorities can be better time spent rather than judging and wishing other’s people time to be used differently?
Is the latest because we envy the time that those people have, and we wish we had the time to get more done and find difficult to understand why spare time can be “wasted” for those irrelevant items in our opinion?
I have to admit that I am more on the judgmental part, but in my defense, it is also my curious side, as I do not understand some enjoyment people get out of “wasting” time, but others would look my hobbies as such as well or not understand why I can never just relax and seat down, in the end I am the CrazyBusyBee for a reason.
We only have one life and whatever happiness and achievements we get out of it, is up to us…
Until the next time, wishing you all a wonderful week….
Photo by Ena Marinkovic: https://www.pexels.com
