Work Life Integration
The idea of work-life balance in the past is to ensure you have distinction between your personal time and work time. However, in the modern world this concept has evolved into more of how to make both work at the same time. Hence, how to integrate both of these. As both are equally important to a person. One cannot fully provide their personal needs, may it be your own gratification or responsibilities at home, if one cannot fulfill their responsibilities at work. And if we are not inspire in our personal lives, we become unmotivated to do our roles at work.
According to this article,
“Work-life conflict arises in a couple of ways. We suffer when our tasks (like seeing my patients) and our values (like valuing time with my family) are misaligned. That was me walking away from a patient who wanted to talk and stressing to get to my family party before the end of the day!
I don’t like the word “balance” in this context because it suggests tradeoffs: We must take from life to give to work. With balance, there is the implication that life and work are in opposition and that “life” happens outside of work.”
Part of aligning all aspects of our lives, from work, social, family and personal is to ensure we put boundaries on these areas to ensure we are present as we fulfill our responsibilities in each of these areas.
There is a program developed by Copy Pitre and his colleagues from University of Indiana, developed to help everyone get started on setting these boundaries. Click here to learn more about it.