Work-Life Balance
I dunno why but this "Work-Life Balance" term was stuck in my mind today. Hmm.. could be because I have been able to leave my office around 5pm for the past few weeks. My company practises flexi hours and so, I opted to start working at 8am and leave at 5pm to avoid the heinous PJ jam.
This schedule has been good so far as I get to resume going to my gym (actually I started to go back only yesterday after wasting 2 months of my gym fees), to catch the 6pm TVB serials or just to go home and play with Axel. I knew it was time for me to return to gym after Axel constantly outruns me.
So to me, I would like to think that I am having "Work-Life Balance" now as I really focus on my work (with a little side of IM and internet surfing, hehe) during office hours and have time for my personal activities after office hours. I do need to stay back once a while but it's not like a long term thingy.
However I think the definition of this term varies from one person to another.
I remember in a previous company, a "high up" manager came for a visit and had a face to face chat with everyone. In my session, he started to talk about "Work-Life Balance". What he has said actually shed some light into my question on why the work culture there is so bad. I actually left the company after less than a year... nothing that I was proud of... but something that I needed to do.
Anyway back to what he said. He asked me "Do you know why in that term, the word 'Work' comes first?". "Because without work, you won't have money to enjoy your life". "That's why in Work-Life Balance, you must put work first so that your life can be balanced".
I was dumbstruck. Although I wanted to disagree with him, I knew what he said has a tinge of truth in it.. but the question is, how far in front would that company expects you to put work first? Would it be at the expense of your family, your friends... your sanity? As the saying goes "Somethings cannot be bought with money".
Well I guess it really boils back down to what we actually want, right? Everything does come with a price... and it's really up to us to decide whether we want to pay for it or not.
