Seth Godin enlightened us with his knowledge, experience and way of thinking during his Seth live in London Q&A session at Imperial College this week in London. The whole session was an infinite source of quotes which is what most of us noted down if we did not have a specific question to ask.
I will paraphrase one of his quotes which stuck in my mind: “When you start talking about work and life balance you have already lost the point”.
I have made this separation of work and life before as I assume most people who are not workaholics have. It is really easy to see your work life as a separate thing from the rest of your life and that is where people are mistaken. Seth brought a very simple example to explain why thinking in this way is wrong by saying: “Do you ever talk about eat – life balance or shower – life balance? No! Eating and showering are part of your life and do not disturb its balance, why should work be different?”
People could argue that work takes a big part of your time every day and usually you cannot do other things you like when working. However, work is a means to an end, a way to fund other activities that people enjoy doing and this is one reason that one should not think of work as being something unrelated to everything else they do.
Another reason is that due to the fact that we spend so much time at work on a daily basis, the occupation that we have chosen should be something that we love doing. This is not always possible due to various circumstances but we should always strive to achieve that in our lives. It is almost inevitable that doing something every day will tire you at some point even if you love doing it; imagine if you hate it.
Most occupations offer you the opportunity to meet, clash and connect with other people. The knowledge gained and behaviour learnt from this is not something that can benefit you only in a work environment. The work environment is a very rich source of valuable experience. If you are using what you learn at work in your out-of-work environment and vice versa what is the point of separating your life in work and out of work?
Our jobs and roles define who we are in many ways, inside and outside of our work environment. One has to enjoy what one does for a living. My understanding from Seth’s quote is that it is apparent that if people feel the need to complain or discuss their work and-life balance then they are not really enjoying their role. Maybe they need a change in their… life!
At Huble Digital we like to live by similar mantras and collated our top six inspirational quotes earlier this year. To find out more, click here.
