Work Life Balance ⚖️

Ashank Bharati
3 min readAug 9, 2022

“If you constantly strive to create whatever you care for, whether you are in a workspace or on the street, you will always feel like you are on a holiday” — SG

work-life-balance

It’s all life!

There is no such thing as work and life. You can work only when you are alive. So you work or do any other stuff — its only through life that you do the same.

If you are constantly striving for creating something, that you truly care for then you would never want to take a break — until its for physical/mental rest. Resting for a while, or for few days(may be doing nothing at all) is something we all need for charging ourselves up and boost our productivity.

But, criticising work for the sake of validating this term called “Work Life Balance” on a regular basis is a serious concern. Ideally the work has to be lived and our life needs to be worked at. If your work is not life, then you should probably look for something that is more lively or exuberant to do.

This concept of work life balance comes only when we consider work and life as two different entities, i.e. when we consider work as a means to earn money for the daily survival and consider our family/friends as a means to touch lives. But, if you contemplate for a while with your fresh mind, you are already touching many lives indirectly with your work. This very perspective will let you reflect the way you are working currently and transform it into a way wherein you can create higher impact in terms of making other lives better, whether its your family or the human civilisation as a whole.

One-Third of a Human’s Lifetime

In case you are doing something, and it does not make sense to you in terms of touching other lives — that wont be fulfilling ever. As a result, we will always want to find some meaning to our own versions of work life balance. Ultimately, we are all aspiring for moments that are liberating for us and for people who are dear to us. So, why not treat our work as a leverage for the same, since the time invested in work is almost one third of our lifetime, at least.

Lets do some math:

No.of hours on work (approx.) ~ 8 hours

No.of hours on sleep (approx.) ~ 8 hours

No. of hours on other stuffs (approx.) ~ 8 hours

Total ~ 24 hours, i.e. only time we have in a day

When we observe this metric, we can easily conclude that almost one-third of our day is invested or spent on work. Approximately, that is nothing but one-third of our lifetime.

one-third-of-your-lifetime-is-work

Now, you decide whether you want to live a full fledged life or a partial life.

We all are breathing right now, aren’t we ?

Inhalation, Exhalation, Inhalation, Exhalation….

If one moment slips without a breath — life is gone. That’s how subtle life is. So each moment if you see, is as important as your breath, whether you are working in that moment or doing something that you love, or time with your family or friends. Anything that you do in a moment, makes that moment fulfilling only and only if you do with acceptance and utmost involvement.

So, its totally on us how we want to perceive work as -

reality-vs-hallucination

“Work as a part of life” — Reality 😇

or

“Work and Life as two different entities” Hallucinatory 😴

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Ashank Bharati

R&D @ NUCLEI | Life-long learner | Fanatical about tech systems and building products