The term “work - life balance” has been drummed into our heads again and again for many years, with various people having different takes on it.
So here’s my take.
Moving into the entrepreneurial path has made me re-evaluate my priorities like never before. On the one hand, I have control over how and when I want to work. On the other hand, work can take me over like a tsunami and permeate into everything that I do…only for life to come in like a bad toothache and hijack all my plans.
The way I’m now wired, I start with balance first.
Balance
A seemingly simple word, but incredibly deep with many different interpretations, personalised to our own world views.
I am inherently spiritual and proud of it. Now I realise the word spiritual needs to be defined here too. For me spirituality means seeking the truth of the "Spirit/Self/existence/reality", transcendence of lower human and animalistic nature, transcendence of our little individuality. It is deeply personal, at the same time it intensely embraces the entire universe as one.
While I still cling on to the individual “Logen”, my priority is to keep “Logen” firmly on the path seeking for truth. In order to do this, I need to keep a balanced and peaceful mind as far as possible - hence this is my overarching priority.
This is my definition of “balance”, and it is not bound by a time schedule, division of priority nor any set of logical rules. If I can be perfectly balanced, I can be intensely into life and/or work, but I start with the focus on balance.
Life
When I think of life, I think of it in terms of duties. Duties to my individual self, ie “Logen”, duties to my family, friends etc.
Having been blessed with the body-mind of “Logen”, I need to provide it with sustenance, experiences and development as per its desires and needs.
And likewise to my family, friends etc, to all of whom I owe immense debts of gratitude. Being present, being there at time of need, providing support etc is a key priority.
Work
For some work is a way to earn a living. For some it’s also a platform for giving back to the world. For some it's a path to finding like-minded people, meaning, joy. Being a workaholic, it’s all of the above for me.
My definition of my individual self, “Logen”, begins with my work, ie an “actuary”, to the point I can’t separate it now. That could change when I retire or move into other positions/pathways in my career.
This is both a blessing and a hurdle to cross, but I’m very grateful for it.
That being said, work for me sits on top of the foundation of “balance”, and the ground floor of “life”. Work is a way to strengthen the foundation and the ground floor too, and should not become an unbearable burden for them, which will put the entire structure at risk.
A common myth is that we need to work very hard to succeed.
Reflecting back on my pathway, I cannot clearly say that hard work is a causation factor for success, though there is indeed correlation. The other variables to consider are strategy and luck surface area.
Attitude is commonly cited as a factor, but is too abstract to pin down, and probably easier explored from a spiritual/internal world point of view. It is also problematic to shape the development of our attitude towards the goal of materialistic success, because the world need not necessarily reward virtuous attitude, rather the perception of virtuosity is more important, and that too is sometimes optional. So I'll leave that out here.
I find that strategy and luck surface area have a bigger role to play in success in the material world.
Strategy is basically spending time thinking about the what, why and how of the work.
Luck is an uncontrollable factor beyond the domain of reason and logic, so the only logical way we can maximise it is to increase our pathways to success is by providing as many opportunities as possible for luck to help us.
In conclusion
No conclusion today - there is no conclusion on this path, only wandering, meandering and pondering.
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