Why Work-Life Balance Is a Lie—and What I'm Doing *Actually* to Create One

I remember a project from not too long ago. It was an entirely new experience for me, and I wanted to excel at it. I did manage to shine through it, but I also remember the distress it caused me even outside work hours, sometimes late at night. I had attached my self-worth to the project, and I thought I had to fix all the issues that came along no matter the hours, because somehow, its failure would be a projection on me.

The work-life balance I had been so vocal about throughout my corporate career went down the drain for one damn project!

In this article:

• Why traditional ideas of work-life balance don't work when your mind never really leaves work
• How attaching your self-worth to work can quietly take over your life
• How I create friction between work and my personal life

I am curious if companies still conduct workshops for work-life balance. Honestly, it's become more of a joke now. Even our offer or joining letters mention the extra hours we might have to put in for work. Hypocrisy in disguise, for sure!

What's saddening is that almost all of us bought into this narrative. We did our best to go on some trips on weekends, took some holidays in between and came back to work thinking that was enough. But tell me, were you really able to keep your mind off work when you were travelling? Did you feel invigorated after returning from your holiday, or did you feel more tired and needed another holiday right after it?

If the day goes by in a blink after simply doing your work, and you dread waking up the next morning to repeat the process just for those tiny vacation days you are hoping to use, it cannot be considered a work-life balance!

The challenge is that we do not have a turn-off button in our heads that we can simply use when we log off from work. Even after I log off every night around 9 pm, I still keep thinking about the unresolved issues or pending tasks and carry them with me to my bed. It's only because I have developed a strong resolve not to let myself jump out of bed the moment I remember an "important" task and my recent health scare that I can keep work at bay. But not everyone can do this.

If you have read this far, consider supporting my work with a coffee ☕. Completely optional.

Unfortunately, the problem is much deeper. The majority of us are burdened with responsibilities of parents, kids and debts to pay for life, which has handcuffed us with work in a suffocating way. And when we tie ourselves to work in an unhealthy way to keep up with the burdens, we inadvertently also start tying our identity to work. Our self-worth becomes measured by the number of promotions we get, and our confidence becomes directly linked with how we were perceived at work.

What saddens me the most is that we forget we have a life we need to get back to; we have kids who require our undivided attention; we have passions that we always wanted to pursue.

You may also want to read - Nobody Told Me What Being a High Achiever Actually Costs — and Here's How I'm Changing It

My idea of how to create a work-life balance

Work-life balance isn't created by dividing hours equally; it requires creating psychological distance from work and building a life worth returning to after you log off.

Creating friction with work outside working hours

Our brains have been conditioned for far too long to keep thinking about unfinished tasks long after we sign off for the day. To change this, we need to develop systems that will help us avoid thinking about work altogether or at least distract us from it.

I know it will be difficult in the beginning, but remember that our brain will always try to choose the known path and response that we are accustomed to. Anything new can feel uncomfortable because our brains tend to prefer familiar patterns and responses.

But this is where you need to flex your willpower and remind yourself why you are creating the boundaries around work.

Here are a few things I am doing which have helped me:

1. I deleted the work apps from my phone altogether. I had tried to avoid installing them for 12 years, and it took one project to pull me into this black hole of continuously checking my emails or pings over Teams that no one was asking me to check, even after my work hours.
   1. This forced me to stick to my working hours, as I am too lazy to open my office laptop before or after work hours since I need to go through multiple steps and a waiting period to even have an updated mailbox.
2. I became disciplined about note-taking and planning my week.
   1. I absolutely dreaded Mondays 7 months ago because I had no clarity about what I wanted to tackle next week at work. And that led to mismanagement of time, waking up in the middle of the night to work on something because I suddenly remembered it, and skipping my workouts because I was too tired of all the thinking of unfinished tasks that were going on inside my head.
   2. All you need is one notebook and one digital app - it could be as simple as a table in Excel or OneNote. The notebook should be used to jot down all tasks coming out of meetings or emails. Then, block an hour on Friday to migrate everything from your notebook to the digital planner for next week or so.
   3. This simple action not only helped me clear my mind but also gave me visibility into what value-enabling activities I was actually doing.

Also read - How I Started Unlearning My Parents' Patterns at Work (What Actually Helped)

Create a bucket list of passions you have always wanted to do in your life

And I don't say this lightly. We have been conditioned from the beginning to follow the stereotypical cycle of life, and I am not saying it's wrong. But most of us were never even given a choice for the path that we wanted to take. And perhaps it has become even more important now, when our careers can consume so much of us.

For me, this looks like writing, reading, working out regularly and creating content that helps people who are in a similar situation to mine.

It doesn't have to be revenue-generating. That should not be the goal when you pick a passion. The goal here is to fill your free time that you might have either spent doomscrolling or binge-watching with doing something meaningful that sparks joy within you. Once you start filling your free time with the things on that bucket list, you may no longer feel the need to overexert yourself at work. Instead, you will start looking forward to logging off and getting back to the activities you have chosen to pursue.

And who knows, these activities could then turn into multiple full-time jobs? That is my ultimate dream.

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See you in the margins.