Work
life balance is much debated subject. A balanced work life creates
satisfaction, happiness, positive energy in life. In turn these lead to greater
success. Let us take a journey using a car. For a smooth journey, a smooth
uniform road is a pre-condition. One will have a bumpy ride despite having best
car and excellent wheels if the road has a lot of pot holes. The selection of a
job or a work helps in giving a smooth environment where one can have a better
ride in a good car.
The second dimension has a good car.
I am not discussing here about a very luxurious car which has excellent set of
features. Let us talk about a car which has good features to feel you
comfortable. What you need next is balanced four wheels. The wheels I will
refer to as wheels of life. For a smooth journey balanced wheels help a lot.
Let us take an analogy where two wheels represent work elements like career
progression and work achievement and other two represent personal life
dimensions like excellent relationships and Health. Needless to say one cannot
visualize a smooth journey if one of the wheel/tyre is punctured. You need a
good heath, an excellent relationships to excel in other two work related
wheels.
These four personal influences can
be tuned to bring about a balance in the four wheels to lead to a smooth life
journey. PQ leading to discipline will help in slicing time to contribute to
health, Relationships, Career development and work performance. Vision will help in setting goals in these
four areas. Passion will help in ensuring you enjoy the journey of moving
towards your goal. For instance if you decided to have a daily morning walk to
help you achieve the health objectives, you are enjoying the morning walk. You
may develop a friend who shares your morning walk. At the end, Conscience is
the super synchronizing influence which ensures that ethical synchronization is achieved amongst
the four influences.
I have learnt that these influences
help you bring work life balance and teach you to remain happy in this great
journey called life. It reminds me of an experiment conducted in the US. In
1957, about 1000 people were studied using a set of questionnaire to access the
percentage of happy people in the society. In 1957 US was not as developed as
we see today. It was found that 1/3rd of the people studied were
happy with their life. A lot of economic development happened in sixties and
later. Each citizen had access to amenities for living a good life. In 1992,
once again the same experiment was conducted on a similar population. The
outcome of the experiment was revealing. It was found that only 1/3rd
of the population studied were happy. The economic well being has no impact on
increasing percentage of happy people. The economic parameters can help improve
percentage of people having access to amenities of life. But the actual
happiness is a function of synchronizing these four personal influences, live a
balanced work life and fill life with a great dose of happiness.
