Moving beyond work-life balance

Starting January 1 of this year, I began tracking happiness. I assign each day a “happiness score” between 1 and 10 and write out a brief explanation.

Patterns are becoming clearer after almost nine months of doing this.

For example, I’m happier the more I’m with my family. I’m also happier when I’m eating well, exercising, and getting enough sleep. I’m happier when I’m productive at work (although this does not appear to be as important to my happiness as family and health).

People talk a lot about finding “balance” in their lives. “Work-life” balance is a term that you likely know well.

What this term implies is that career (work) has mass equal to family and health (life). That is to say: If you dropped ten spoons full of career onto one side of a scale and ten spoons full of family/health into the other, the scale would balance. In equation form, it would look like this:

Family + health = Career

My experience, however, leads me to believe that career (work) does not have mass equal to family and health (life). In fact, when it comes to happiness, family and health are more important than work.

In other words: If you dropped ten spoons full of career onto one side of a scale and ten spoons full of family/health into the other, the family/health side would be heavier. When it comes to happiness, family and health are more substantive than work.

At least this is true for me.

You can take the scale metaphor too far. You can say that if family and health have more “mass” than work, you need to work more to achieve “work-life” balance.

So mass may not be the best metaphor.

Energy is better.

And the question is not how much energy does family/health or work consume, but how much energy do these things generate?

In my case, one hour with my son generates ten times as much energy (gratitude, happiness, joy, satisfaction) as one hour at work. Energy is vital to survival. Energy is also what I have to share with others.

When you think about it this way, “work-life” balance is all wrong. It’s the same as saying “work-life breakeven.” It’s hoping you can generate just enough energy doing one activity to replenish the energy you exhaust doing another. It’s living your inner life “paycheck-to-paycheck.”

Wouldn’t it be better to live with energy to share and spare?

If so, achieving “balance” shouldn’t be the goal. Instead, the goal should be to immerse ourselves more and more in activities that generate the most spiritual energy in our lives. Likewise, we should do less of the activities that exhaust our spiritual energy.

I’m not saying I should quit my job to spend all of my time with my family. The financial strain would in turn strain family relationships. What once created energy would begin to exhaust it instead. We have to learn to be good stewards of our energy through the activities we choose to do.

Nonetheless, if focusing on my family and health generate the most spiritual energy in my life, I need to design my life around family and health.

If certain kinds of work enlarge my energy while others exhaust it, I need to design my work to focus on activities that generate an energy surplus.

This is easier said than done. Our culture of life management and work is not set up this day. But if life is worth living, then we owe it to ourselves and the people we love to try.

What do you think about all of this? What is working (or not working) for you?