Why Work-Life Balance Is a Myth

The chief executive officer of Amazon has dismissed the notion of ‘work-life balance’. Amazon CEO Jess Bezos says he tells all new staff at Amazon that they need to abandon this notion of ‘balance’ between their professional and personal lives. Instead Bezos thinks people need to cultivate a holistic relationship between work and their personal lives. They need to accept that work is life, and our life should define our work.

Bezos, who has previously been listed as the world’s wealthiest man, says speaking of ‘a balance’ implies that we have to ‘trade off’ one against the other, whereas he has a philosophy of integrating work and life.

I work from home, integrating the personal and professional

As a motivational speaker, author and life coach, most days I work from home. I do my writing at home, and I prepare presentations for my tours and presentations at home. Have you ever worked from home? It’s a strange life. You can begin a project and then stop to pack the dishwasher or do a load of washing. You set your own hours. Bezos also has a unique approach to work. Every morning he has breakfast with his family. This is important to him and non-negotiable. He also does not set an alarm clock. This tells me that he tends to go to bed and get up at the same time. He is a man with good life habits. Bezos avoids scheduling meetings. Perhaps he dislikes other people eating up his time, and every day puts some time aside to do his own dishes. Is this a way of making himself ‘at home’ at work or does doing menial tasks give him a ‘reality check’?

Bezos says he tries to train senior and junior staff how to maintain a ‘healthy symmetry’ between work and play. “This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too,” he said. “But especially the people coming in. I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off.”

Working from home on the Gold Coast, I find my personal and professional life flow into one another. Sometimes I’ll be talking to someone on the phone and come up with an idea that would help my work, so I’ll write it down and put some thought into it as soon I get off the phone. For me there is no strict divide between my personal and professional life and Bezos has a similar approach. He says work and life are not a balancing act, but a ‘circle’. Again, work is life, and life defines our work – it is a never-ending circle.

If you are happy at work, you’re happy at home and vice versa

Bezos says it’s a mistake to compartmentalise work and your personal life into two competing dynamics. “If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy,” said Bezos. “And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy. You never want to be that guy — and we all have a co-worker who’s that person — who, as soon as they come into a meeting, they drain all the energy out of the room.”

Bezos is not the first executive to argue that the notion of a work-life balance is obsolete. Jonathon Fields, a US advertising executive, says the idea of a work-life balance comes from the assumption that work is outside of life. But Fields says he writes for a living and writing is a big part of who he is as a man. He says it’s false to say your work and personal life don’t intersect. Fields says ideally your work and personal life should ‘feed’ each other. Many artists see work and life in this way. Their art often becomes a means of understanding their life – the natural environment, their relationships, even the meaning of life. And art defines the artist. Two social science researchers, Jeffrey Greenhaus and Gary Powell, put it this way in an article in the Harvard Business Review:

Work and personal life should be allies and that participation in multiple roles, such as parent, partner, friend, employee, can actually enhance physical and psychological well-being — especially when all of the roles are high quality and managed together.

This is an interesting way of looking at work, and life outside work. In our personal life we play many different roles. We may be a spouse, parent, neighbour, son/daughter or friend. We don’t aim to ‘balance’ those roles. We just accept we are all those things. Why can’t we also accept that our job is a big part of who we are and also just needs to be included amongst the other roles?

How to avoid becoming a workaholic

Perhaps people are reluctant to incorporate work into their ‘life’ because they fear it will over-run their life. They instead segregate work from their personal life. However if you run your own business or work from home, you will probably be more flexible about this. You might already have a system that works for you. Perhaps you are a mother with an office in your kitchen and you effortlessly move between your startup business and attending to your children. Your children might even come up with great ideas for your business! But not all people have it this good.

Is work eating into your personal life? Rebecca Fraser-Thill is a psychologist and career coach. She says to avoid becoming a workaholic you must first recognise one fundamental truth. “The work-life blend begins in one particular direction: from self to work,” says Rebecca. “Work may come to inform the self over time, but work must first and foremost be designed by the individual if we are to experience meaning and flow, the bedrocks of lasting happiness.” This basically means that to have the perfect work-life blend, ideally you need to be doing a job you love, not just a job that pays the bills. This comes back to my passion for profit philosophy. It would be great if we could all make a hobby or a pursuit that we love our career.

Ali Davies, a business coach and change strategist, says successfully combining work and life goes deeper that just setting a few hours aside for each. “I think the key is focusing on designing the life you really want, creating your own definition of success based on your core values and then re-engineering work or business to support that,” Ali said. “Business should serve and protect what is most important in life – not balance with it.”

Have you ever worked for yourself?

In the last year you may have started your own business. Of course it takes time to get your own business up and running. I suggest you regularly evaluate your work-life blend. This is true for everyone. Put a cross on one day of the year on your calendar. Year in, year out I want you to stop on this day and ask yourself if you are happy with your work life mix. If the answer is no, start looking at how you can turn this around. Identify your priorities. What do you want more of – time with family or money to invest in your future? Only you can answer those questions, but it is essential that you ask them to yourself. Know who you are and what you want, then arrange your life accordingly. Good luck!