Work life balance – a perennial question?

The seemingly elusive answer to work life balance can be found in small, subtle changes, apparently.

In a recent session at The School of Life on How to Balance Work with Life participants were asked to write headlines summing up their lives.  Responses included ‘Pressurised Manager Desperate For Dating Time’ and ‘Professional Hits The Wall Due To Deadline Pressure’.

Sound familiar?

Nick Southgate - a philosopher cum advertising consultant who has advised the government, the BBC and Lucozade, teaches The School of Life courses How To Balance Life With Work, How To Find a Job You Love and How To Be Cool – regularly meets people experiencing “an employment version of the seven year itch”. His success stories include people who have decided to take time off to travel or to discover what they really want, and an IT manager who realised he needed to love the job he has. “They looked happier, younger and more relaxed,” he says. –

At a 2010 Technology, Education & Design conference in Sydney, advertising CEO and author of Fat, Forty and Fired, Nigel Marsh called for individuals to take responsibility for their quality of life. “There are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation where they work long hard hours at jobs they hate in order to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like,” he said to applause and knowing laughter.

So here’s the good news. Both Southgate and March agree that very small changes are often all that are needed for transformation. In Southgate’s experience, sometimes we project our unhappiness onto our jobs. “You may be in the right career, but you may need to fall back in love with it,” he says. Marsh’s Eureka moment came when he read a story to his young son and put him to bed only to be told: “This has been the best day of my life.”

www.ted.com/talks/nigel_marsh_how_to_make_work_life_balance_work.html