No more Work-Life Balance ! It is Work – Life Integration

Based on my recent conversations with my friends ,colleagues and in internal survey with our team, most of us are having difficulties in Work – Life Balance due to various reasons like long time travel to office , late conference calls, tight dead lines, customer expectations etc.,

I got an opportunity to discuss with Sukumar ( sastwingees.org)  about this challenge and he guided me  about “Work – Life Integration” which is the key part to succeed in today’s knowledge workers life.

I was doing  a research on this topic by reading few articles and sharing the links to understand more about this . It is very interesting for me …and am hoping it will be interesting for you also…

1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ronashkenas/2012/10/19/forget-work-life-balance-its-time-for-work-life-blend/

2. http://www.fastcompany.com/1825042/strive-work-life-integration-not-balance

3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasmerrill/2012/07/19/dont-balance-work-and-life-integrate-them/

4. http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/cwf/pdf/Work_Life_Evolution_Study_final.pdf – Excellent Study on Work – Life by Boston College…

5. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470713433.fmatter/pdf

My Impressions :-

1. It is interesting for me to know about Work-Life Integration ( No more Work – Life Balance , which is not sensible going forward for anyone , especially Knowledge Workers  like us )

2.  I was surprised by Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer, the idea that someone could achieve a healthy work-life integration when having a baby seemed too hard to believe and back to work in short span .  If she is able to manage successfully her work, and I trust, we can learn effectively from her .

3.  Work – Life integration is a cultural change agent and will bring lot of benefits which lead to positive eustress .

4. Find ways to squeeze your work and life whereever applicable instead of spliting or divided. 

5. Capitalising the technology , Social, Mobility to a great extent to use it effectively.

6. As mentioned in Forbes article, let us  do not try to balance anything. Second, try to integrate instead, which requires some real awareness of our preferred behaviors, self-identity, and sense of control.

What do you think – do you strive for work-life balance, or work-life integration? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments! Wish you great weak ahead …