New Balance; Work-Life Balance Is Non-sense

Work is an important part of life and cannot be balanced with it. The idea of balance between work and home makes more sense but begs other questions about why work has the potential to dominate and exhaust us. The central issue here is the interplay between those activities that drain our energy and those that generate or replenish it. There is something wrong with a workplace that drains us so much that we must escape it to replenish our energy and protect our well-being. We consider four possible relationships between work and home, and the buzz and drain that each entails. We dub these the exhausted, the frustrated, the delighted and the depressed. The implication is that we need to create workplaces that are more self-sustaining: that replenish the energy they take so that we can seek balance in our life at work. Such workplaces can also make a positive contribution to our home lives where the same approach to sustainability may be applied.