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Hi Team,

I'm sorry this email is a few days late; the Aust Day long weekend got in the way and this is actually the topic I want to write about today; integrating our work and our daily lives.

"There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life." Alain De Botton

A countless number of books and articles have been written about "work-life balance", but the past year has shown us that trying to balance your work and your private life is extremely difficult because it always ends up being a "work-life compromise". In a recent article called "The Myth of Work-Life Balance" Robert Glazer stated
"work-life integration is more akin to a puzzle where all of the different pieces fit together to form a complete picture." 
On any given weekday we are all trying to juggle our work commitments with our family's schedule, our hobbies, our health, and fitness activities etc etc. Living through the current pandemic has forced us to integrate our work and our home life and has made us prioritize how we spend our time.  

"Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion." Simon Sinek

How you chose to spend your time depends on your primary motivations, your values, and your purpose. We all know that time is a valuable commodity and that devoting your time to a specific activity comes at a certain cost. So really your life is a constant series of trade off's. You are constantly deciding what to spend your time doing verses what you are prepared to give up. Unfortunately, you can only be in one place at a time and as the old saying goes "you can't have your cake and eat it too". 

The main take away from Robert Glazers article for me, is that work-life integration is all about quality rather than quantity. To successfully integrate your work and your private life you must be able to embrace and participate in all the different components of life, the good and the bad. The real challenge for us all is to not just participate but to be fully present and engaged in each aspect of our life and our work. The quality of the time that you spend doing things with your family is more important than the quantity of time and that should be the main focus of living an integrated life.

Thanks for reading,
Stay safe open to change.
David.