Work Life Balance

Introduction :
“Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket by Miguel Cervantes” is a commonly used phrase
applicable to almost every aspect of the person’s life; be it Investing, Learning, Business or
Career etc. The process of maintaining a balance between these three facets of life for some is
a never-ending process. The demand of these aspects is equally important in life and
choosing one over another is a Challenge in itself. For some one, ideal Work life balance may
be a state of mind where he/she does not have any fear of missing out from important aspect
of his life, they consider it as a habit which can be mastered by having clear thoughts about
priorities but for other it may be inclined to a particular aspect like family time or career
growth or may be any particular hobby.
It is important to strike a fine balance between work and life. If we see from a long-term
perspective, work is a part of our life. What we call life is a combination of our family,
hobbies and work. All the three are complimentary to each other. Neglecting either of them
can lead to imbalance in a person’s life.

Getting into the Problem

Enriching experience of all the group members has brought into the picture the fact that
maintaining the work/life balance, irrespective of the profession you are in, be it
businessman, executive at MNC etc., the mentioned dilemma is universal. Some of the
reflections of group members coming from various field are shared below:
 “Boarding the corporate journey five years ago with conceptual/theoretical
knowledge of maintaining work-life balance and hence targeting the vision to achieve
the same. For the first 2 years, learning the organizational culture and observing the
workflow and perception of the people has helped me to have a firm footing in the
organization. Inner thrive the learn and explore new things kept on extending my
office hours by an hour or so (spending almost 10-11 hours in the office). While
excelling in my work life, lately I realized the things I am giving up Family Time
(even my room-mate poked me for that thing), Personal Time and
Socializing/Networking Time - some of the critical parameters for development, both
personal and career.”
 “The fear of losing the job and hence performing well clouded the vision of the
person to think of maintaining the balance in his/her life and thus resulted in the over-
stretching on weekdays and giving up the family time.”
 “We learn by observation, imitation and repetition” by Denis Waitley is a classic
quote which reflects my learning on the topic work life balance. Observing my father,
who is the sole breadwinner and runs family business of construction, gave me an
insight of the challenges faced by a person in maintaining the balance. Since the
 nature of the business is seasonal, he usually remains occupied during peak season
and finds difficult to give time to the family. To the rescue, mom manages almost
everything (collaborating with the partner). During odd hours, whenever we needed
father’s guidance on anything, he is always a call away and preferred family over
business.
 “My journey has been of the free child with nurturing parents. But few years back,
unfortunately my elder brother faced medical emergency in Delhi while I was
deputed to a major project in Mumbai which required my presence. As observed and
learned, I prioritized my family and having trustful and supportive colleagues
(building support networks besides turned out be a boon for me as he helped me with
the most of the work and my priorities.”

Challenges Faced
Neglecting the family may lead to decreased quality time spending and misunderstanding
among the family, which can affect the emotional health of the person as well as the family
and can induce stress to the individual. This can ultimately affect his career. A family gives a
purpose to one’s life. Having a strong relationship with the family provides a person with
high emotional confidence. Thus it can make a person bring out the best in him and others in
all aspects of life.
Neglecting the career comes at the cost of stagnated career growth and, in some cases, can
lead to comparing oneself with his peers who are in a better position. Again, this can lead to
stress. Career has the potential to improve one’s life. It can help your talent to get manifested
into something tangible. As well as it acts as a source of income.
However, overdoing it can drain out a person’s energy. Over-Working can increase stress and
take a toll on a person’s health and happiness. Neglecting Hobbies can make a person miss
out on the flavour of life. Hobbies can enrich our mood, which will lead to better
performance. One of our group members says, “In my case, I like to work out in the gym and
play guitar .Whenever I indulge in my hobby, it acts as a complete stress buster and hence
gives me new energy to take on other activities”.

Methods to Overcome
Before approaching the methods to overcome the problem of striking a balance among family
life, hobbies and career, one must be able to define the minimum threshold of each of the
three aspects considering limited time and resources to accomplish them together. Eg: for
some a basic family life might be just being able to have dinner with the family daily; for
some it may be having time for recreational activities with family on weekends. Time being
the real constraint and the most potent resource needs to be devoted to the field that serves
maximum utility to an executive and for most of us that turns out to be Family.
Once the definitions are clear, we need to prioritize each aspect. Experienced ones usually
advocate– “one needs to have the priorities fixed and consider personal and social
responsibilities equally important as work; spending time with family is a big stress buster
and can also increase work efficiency”. Prioritising one over another is the key, we have to do
some compromise but we should try to minimize scope of compromise. While someone
compromises the spending time with family, his spouse compensates by minimizing that
compromise with her availability in family. Thus family support becomes important.
Based on the discussions, we have come up with some practices that, if adopted in our
routine, can directly or indirectly help achieve a balanced life:
 Organising your schedule, a day prior, considering your priorities. Thereon discipline is
the key to juggle the three aspects.
 Limiting your availability after office and creating a culture of non-working post-office
hours among your subordinates.
 Combining family life and hobbies – A common hobby for you and the family would
prove to be one good recreational activity. Eg: planning weekend bike rides – something that
would give pleasure and also add some value at the same time.
 One smart approach can be to adopt methods that help lower the overall stress levels in the
family, such as having a pet.
Conclusion
Choosing family, career or hobbies is a personal preference and is decided by the experiences
the person has gone through in his life. To maintain a good hobby and a family, career is
extremely important as that’s what keeps the family feeding and financially supporting the
time for hobbies.
While choosing one option over another, we need to realise that compromise for not choosing
other options should be minimal. And the prioritization of these different options changes
over the time.
Whenever there is more urgency in family or career, the urgent option will get prioritised.
Creating support network in home as well as in workplace is important so that in case of
urgency, things are handled smoothly. Nevertheless, the struggle to find a balance among
family life, hobbies, and career is an endless process and promoting such an environment
within family or workplace needs to go on. Though slowly, but gradually many organisations
have come with corporate programs for the executives to maintain the balance. To conclude,
Work, Family and hobbies are intertwined with each other and most important as a value is
to create a balance between them. Hence it is not impossible, as they say when there is a
will, there is a way.

Report by(in ALPHABETIC ORDER) –

1.Abeer Sharma 4.Naveen. R
2.Arijit Kumar Dey 5.Rishab Sharma
3.Himanshu Gupta 6.Sumeet Kant Kaul