Work Life Balance

I see a lot of people talking of work life balance. About 10 years ago, I would hear this from people who "have been there and done that". Today I hear it from people who have started working less than a year ago. Honestly, I have started to think of it after around 15 long and hard years of working, am I late? I don't know.

What does "Work Life Balance" mean?

To me it means, how you balance your work and your personal life. All work and no play makes you a "workaholic", all play and no work makes you "unemployed".

I have always been a strong believer of "work hard and play hard". So, during the week days, I am all about work, and during the weekends, I am all about time with my family and recreation. There are occasions when I am required to take a break in the middle of the week, to attend a family function, to attend a wedding of a friend or to socialize. I ensure that work does not suffer and organize for things to be taken care of when I am gone, and take this break happily.

Young people today, generally complain about long work hours and no work-life balance and are constantly complaining. Come on, if you don't slog it out now, will you do it at age 50? and who will pay you a salary if work does not get done? I tell them, if you want a work life balance, you better be highly efficient, when your manager assigns 8 hours for a task, do it in 8 hours or less, get the work reviewed, get your manager to sign off on the work, and walk out of office at 6 PM, who will stop you?

In my opinion, people work additional hours due to the following reasons.

1. New on the job, learning the ropes
2. They know what to do but are lazy
3. They are low on skill and inefficient
4. They are assigned more work than they can get done in the day
5. Circumstances in the team, cause them to be overloaded

New on the job, learning the ropes

These are people who have just joined and are learning the ropes, they will surely need more time to complete a task. This is the time to spend long hours and get efficient. If they get efficient now, they can take it easy in time to come and of course, they grow too. These people don't have the right to complain, they have to be patient and go through the grind. If they want to continue to complain they must get out or sent out of the system immediately because they do not deserve to be in the system.

Know what to do but Lazy...

These are the people who come in to work at 10 AM, have a coffee between 10 and 10.30 AM, email all friends between 10.30 AM and 11.30 AM, browse the net between 11.30 AM and 12.30 PM, discuss with colleagues where they will go for lunch between 12.30 PM and 1 PM, come back to their desks at 2.30 PM after lunch and then think about their assigned tasks. If this guy starts at 2.30 PM, he can get an 8 hour task done only by 10.30 PM. Now, does this person have a right to complain of work-life balance? No he cannot, but he does!

Now, if the person is super efficient, he/she can get an 8 hour task done in 4 hours and this person can still get out of work at 6.30 PM.

Low on skill and inefficient
These are people who have never tried hard enough in life, they could have spent enough time studying in the initial days and could have mastered all that it takes to deliver, but did not. They chose to enjoy and take it easy at that time.

It's like this, Jack and John joined a company as programmers. John worked for 12 hours each day while Jack spent only 6 hours each day taking advantage of the flexible working at this company, had a great time with friends and partied hard. In 1000 days time, John has 12000 hours of experience while Jack could manage only 6000 hours. Theoretically, Jack could do only 50% of John could do. When compared to John, Jack was lower on skill and was inefficient. During appraisal, John was seen as someone who had twice the experience that Jack had and gets a better deal. Jack is in no position to complain because he just did not put in the effort.

Assigned to more than 8 hours of work
This is a special case, the Manager is allocating more than 8 hours of work per day, this may be due to the following reasons...

• The manager knows that you are super efficient and can get an 8 hour assignment done in 6 hours, so try and see if he can get more out of you. If this is the case, explain to your manager, and negotiate when you need time off.
  
• The Manager has over-committed on the project deadline and pushing his team to get it done by working additional hours. Is everyone else in the project also working as hard as you, if yes, then continue to work hard, because if you revolt, you are more likely to feel guilty if the project fails. If no, the following point would answer the question. 
• The manager does not like you, and he is hell bent on working you to death, so he is trying his best to ensure that you fail. However, this is a rare possibility. You should discuss this matter with your manager and explain that you are overworked and negotiate a possibility.
• It may just be that the situation is tight, the customer is pushing your organization to deliver faster than committed dates, or your company expects this deal to close ahead of time and is trying to wrap up the project quicker. Now, don't expect your manager to come and give you all the details and be sorry for you, but you can always ask your manager why you are being overworked and the effect it is having on you.

Each of the above is a special case and one must carefully consider before escalating, if you choose to escalate, try and understand the situation and give benefit of doubt to your organization and try and help your company when required, after all, they have created an opportunity for employment for you.

If you think your Manager or organization is lying to you, be patient, believe me, they don't stand a chance trying to fool a large team for a long time, they will pay for it.

Circumstances in the team, cause them to be overloaded
There is a high possibility that some of your team members are low performers and are delivering less than what is expected. The manager may be giving you additional work, just to get by and maintain the overall team productivity under check.

Try and analyze the situation see if any of the above points make sense, but do not conclude. Discuss this with your Manager and allow him/her to conclude. Highlight the fact that you need some time off, or that you are tired, I'm sure he/she will understand. If you help the Manager when he/she needs it, the Manager too will respond on the same coin.

To end...
Be the best, work as hard as you can, while you can. This will enable you to have a better work-life balance, a better chance to spend time with your family, with your friends, or just be with yourself and relax.

YOU!, have to make that beginning.