careernav.

By Anne Parker

Getting the balance right

Seems straight forward enough, you work a set number of hours a week and the rest of the time is yours to spend as you like. Great stuff! You’re done with long hours of study, exams, training; you are now free to pursue lots of things you put aside and to take up new ones. So it’s off to the gym twice a week, Italian classes one night a week for the much longed for visit to Italy, you can go out with friends as often as you like, play a competitive sport, spend more time with your hot new “friend”. You’ve been told that you are expected to contribute to the household chores and do your own washing or you may have left home and have to share the jobs with your flat mates but hey it’ll be a piece of cake; lot’s of time to do more of your own things.

Here’s the deal:

You’ve landed your very first full time job and it’s taken a lot of time and effort to get it with perhaps some rejections along the way. You’re employed to work 37. 5 hours over 5 days Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5pm with 45 minutes for lunch and one 15 minute break in the morning. The money’s not bad either. 

Here’s the reality:

Well to start with working a full day, 5 days a week is actually quite tiring until you get used to it Not since I was 2 years old was it necessary for me to have a nap after work until I started my first full time job. You may have put in more than 37.5 hours a week at school but it was spread over 7 days and it probably wasn’t as intense as a paid job can be. If you had a casual job during school where you worked a solid 8 hour shift imagine what it’s like doing it for 5 consecutive days!

All of a sudden work has become really busy and you’re asked to stay later a couple of nights a week for as long as it takes to complete the project. One of those nights is the night you go to Italian classes, which you paid several hundred bucks for but can you afford to say no?

You also have to keep up to date in your field of work and it’s expected that you will do about 40 hours of professional development a year in your own time .Not much when you average it out over 52 weeks but it involves several Saturdays and that’s your regular gym time.

The company you work for has a strong culture of socializing and it’s expected that once a week you’ll go out with them. Sounds great but that’s a night set aside for the new hot “friend”. How will that go down?

Your family wants to have a weekly meal together: Sunday night okay?

Your sporting club has asked you to go on the committee and at least one sub-committee; shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours a week plus travel time. Don’t forget training and the weekly game.
So how’s your life looking now? On the surface it looks quite balanced. You have a fulltime job, a sport, a social life, community service (the sporting club committee), a special relationship and family time.
The reality that many jobs these days demand more than the set number of hours really requires you to be flexible and adaptable. How you manage the life work balance depends on your personality, your energy level, your health, your stage of life and your values.

All of the above roles bring responsibilities – to your employer, your family, your friends and to yourself. Which is the greater?  There’s no simple answer to this; only you can determine what’s important to you and this requires you to prioritise your responsibilities and make decisions about what matters most.

Stages

Over your working lifetime, some 40 to 45 years by the way, your priorities will change according to your stage of life and your own personal development and experiences.

 Young, single and relatively fancy free you may put work and friends very high on the list after all you need to perform well in your job to keep it and to get on. Financial commitments may demand that you earn a certain amount to pay your bills and give you the life style you hope to enjoy. You may want to build up your savings for a new car to replace the old bomb and then there’s the very difficult goal of getting a deposit together for a unit or house. An overseas trip is often on the agenda too.

Later on if you have a family to help support or totally support and a mortgage and more bills to pay, your priorities will certainly change with family and earning enough to keep everything ticking along being your highest considerations. Juggling these competing demands is for most of us the hardest stage in working life. Those who put family first may not rise up the career ladder and may earn less but for them the value, roles and responsibilities of family life are of primary importance and they want to share it with their partner Those who opt for putting their career and making money above all else do so often for the best of reasons, to provide for their family as best they can, usually wanting to give more than they had as a kid, or because it’s the role they believe they must fulfill. Neither situation is right nor wrong, just a different set of values and priorities.

When your children are finally independent (could take 18 – 30 years depending on how many kids and what they do) you may well have some spare time and spare cash to indulge in some hobbies that you had to forego or to take up new ones. You may wish to spend more time working to advance your career that went on hold during the child rearing years. This applies particularly to women but more men are taking a more active role in parenting and the traditional gender roles are gradually changing. Just think back to your grandparents and how their roles were structured, compare that with your parents and your own generation. The changes are quite apparent aren’t they?

How do you know what you value most?

There’s no single plan or solution to this. It develops as your life unfolds. It’s good to have a career plan, something to work towards but as your situation changes you have to be able to adapt. Talking it over with family and friends often helps or from time to time getting some expert help may be the go. People who are trained in these matters such as life coaches, career practitioners and psychologists can help you identify your values and priorities that will lead you to maintaining a life and work balance that suits you.

Maintaining work and life balance? In a nutshell it’s about harmony, distribution of time and compromise.

Pearls of wisdom

• Work close to home or move close to work to minimize travel which can really make the working day very long and upset your work and life balance
• Establish some times during the week that are non negotiable for extra work such as Tuesday nights are for Italian classes, Sunday is family time
• To protect your personal life work hard and fast and show the boss that longer hours isn’t necessarily the only way to achieving productivity