If You Can’t Have Work-Life Balance, Try Work-Life Integration

If You Can’t Have Work-Life Balance, Try Work-Life Integration

Finding the right balance for work and life is difficult. If you find that your work and home life interfere with one another, you might want to try a “work-life integration” mentality instead.

Photo by U.S. Army.

Work-life balance philosophies typically entail cutting ties with work for an extended amount of time to focus on the rest of your life, and vice versa. It’s a nice idea, but it isn’t feasible for everyone. Some of us have a difficult time completely disconnecting from work, either because we love what we do, or we fall victim to our technology being designed to make us, and work, reachable at all times.

Mashable suggests crafting and using your own work-life integration method instead. This is when you effectively find pockets of time in your work and life schedules to lend to one another, or, if you can, blend them together.

Here’s an example:

…Menard provides a scenario of a nurse who works the night shift, who started a running group at work to connect with her colleagues and simultaneously squeeze a fitness routine into her schedule. The group meets three times a week during “lunch hour” for a quick, half-hour run and a healthy bite. “Here, you see the four major life spheres overlap: work/career, family/friends, health/wellness and fun/activities,” says Menard. “The closer my clients can get to this kind of overlap, the better they can function. They don’t need to try to find extra time to devote to each of the non-work-related spheres. It’s all built in.”

Developing a work-life integration system could be the answer to your prayers if you have a high list of demands on both ends. Hit the link below to read more about it.

The ‘Work-Life Balance’ Misnomer: Is Work-Life ‘Integration’ the New Norm? [Mashable]


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