Work-life balance

Work life balance: I was not aware of this term when I was doing my articleship at PwC, Kolkata. We haven’t heard of the word ‘life’ there and it was just work which had to be balanced out with more work. If at all the word life was heard, it was juxtaposed with the word ‘hell’. I could hear people calling – life is hell. And that’s the reason none of us were looking forward to our lives!!

Back home at Delhi PwC Office, when I was working at a senior position, the term work-life balance had become more prevalent. Plus we have been reading a lot about this in newspapers as well. Lot many employees were leaving the organisation and the reason quoted was work-life balance. That’s when I became little curious and started to find out the exact meaning of the term and how does it fit me. There was this economics fanatic in me who helped me link it with the backward bending curve of labour force, wherein workers seek for leisure after there is improvement in their pay scales. They start trading off between money and free time!! When I discussed this with my manager, he reacted by saying that we are not “labours”. We have a white collar job and the economic theory was not made for us. We were working for days and days and nights and nights and over a period of time I could sense that my timings were actually off balanced towards the work front. This was the case with me. And this is the same with everyone. I was wondering why people don’t complain about their timings being off-balanced towards the other side. Life, I mean. Don’t be surprised. That’s what happened with me when I had planned to take 4 months long break from my work before going for MBA. No work. There was only ‘life’ left. Not literally. This forced me to go for a short 2-months employment with PwC again. I have just joined and I am in my honeymoon period. I am still looking for the word ‘work’. In fact, it happens everywhere you join afresh. I think it’s like a lull before the storm. Something like butcher humming a tune before cutting the neck off the lambs!! At least, that’s what happened to me when I started with PwC.

Coming back to the same side of work-life balance we started with, as I believe there are far too many people on that side unlike me. No man on his death-bed ever said "I wish I'd spent more time in the office." Watching your child grow up, spending time with loved ones, freaking out with friends, being there at those special moments in other people's lives - all these can probably give you as much joy as a deal clinched, deadline achieved, appraised with good rating or a market share point gained.

"What would you do differently if you knew you had only six months to live?" We could all probably answer that one quite easily (spend more time with the family, play with the kids, take off on that vacation to the hills/ beaches, read/ write that book...). Alas, none of us really knows when precisely we have only six months to go. I wish everyone knows there end date in life. This way they can countdown as to how many years they have in their ‘life’ rather then how many years they have spent. This would make life little more precious for everyone and people would start giving more importance and time to their loved ones.

As for me, I again wish to come on to the same side as most people are. I am writing this piece while trying to utilize my office time!!! Believe me, it’s not easy to have the word ‘work’ deleted from that term either. The most important word is neither ‘work’ nor ‘life’ but the word ‘balance’. And that’s what we should all seek to achieve.