Do you ever talk about food/life balance? Or sleep/life balance?
Of course not. They’re natural parts of your life. (Unless you’re on Uberman’s Sleep Schedule, then you might indeed talk about sleep/life balance 
)
Yet some people insist on talking about work/life balance. As if work was somehow separate from the rest of your life.
Work is a natural part of your life
If you regularly struggle with “work/life balance”. your work probably isn’t part of your life.
In other words, your work is out of alignment with your core values. It’s something you do to earn money, but it’s not something that fills you with satisfaction and fulfillment day after day.
If you loved your work, you wouldn’t worry about your work/life balance. It would just be a natural part of your life, like eating, or exercise, or going to the cinema. You would naturally establish a balance based on your needs.
If you feel lonely, you will hang out with people more. If you feel tired you will sleep (or rest, or exercise) more. You naturally balance your life, and you can balance your work just as well.
If you align your work with your core values, you won’t even need to think about work/life balance. You will achieve it naturally.
Then it simply comes down to knowing your core values 
That’s beyond the scope of this post, but put simply, you figure out what are the most important things for you personally. To do that, you can hire a life coach, or buy a copy of How to Be Rich and Happy (not an affiliate link), which is one of the reasons I greatly recommend that book. Or simply give it some deep, hard thought.
Obsession… good or bad?
A few bloggers have recently been debating obsession across the blogosphere… and I can’t help throwing my 2 pennies in.
Jonathan Mead writes about making a living out of your obsession. Quite simply, he says you need to be obsessed about your work – breathe it, walk it… jump out of bed in the morning excited to get working!
Then Ali Hale comes along claiming you should not be obsessed about your work. She claims it destroys your life balance – your relationships and health suffer. Instead, she tells you to love your work, but have a life beyond that – don’t be defined by your work.
I’d say they’re both right… up to a point.
My favorite way of life is short-term obsessions.
If you try to balance everything, you don’t make the best use of your time. There’s a lot of time during the day when you’re simply thinking – and what you think about makes a huge difference to your life.
If you try to balance everything, your thoughts will be all over the place… and you won’t get very deep with that thinking.
Whereas if you get obsessed for a few weeks… breathe and live one main part of your life… your thoughts will revolve around that.
Right now I’m obsessed about my blog. And every time I take a break, my mind turns to that. How I can bring more value to my readers. What topics I could write about. How I can better connect with other bloggers I like. Right before I go to sleep and when I wake up, I’m thinking about things related to my blog.
And it’s making a huge difference to how my blog is progressing. (Just wait, I’ve got a few great guest posts coming up on other blogs.)
Short term obsessions are like focusing on your work for hours at a time.
You’ll get so much more meaningful work done if you focus for a few hours, instead of getting distracted every few minutes. And short-term obsessions work the same way.
And then, when I get saturated with one part of my life, I take a short break (a few days/weeks) and then turn to something else. Be it my blog, or socializing, or jiu jitsu, or my studies… I find another obsession.
For me, this works out best for long-term balance and improving my life.
And that’s why I recommend short-term obsessions. They work really well for me.
What’s your take on obsession with your work? Good, or bad?
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I am perfectly agreeing with this.
The problem that leads to this is that for most, especially in capitalist society the word work carries a stigma.
It comes from the fact that most do things for money that are not enjoyable at all – like standing behind a conveyor belt assembling radios, for small pay … I think not many would find it fun and rewarding.
Then if someone does something interesting, and all the time, people wonder what is wrong with him, as they perceive work as something that should not be fun, just something one must do.
Being in love with your work is all well and good, but it’s a rather unrealistic view. If it were possible for everyone, there would a whole lot of unfilled jobs in the world, wouldn’t there? How many people are excited to get up each day and scrub bedpans or haul garbage? Are there really as many people who feel deeply fulfilled by accounting work as there are accounting jobs? There was a time when people did what their father and grandfather before them did; lived above their shop, and probably never gave it another thought.
As for balance, I feel it’s just another false choice modern society tells us we must make. It falls into the same category as “reducing stress” or “finding our inner child” or “turning on, tuning in, dropping out”… just the latest buzzword. Every decade or so there’s a new one we’re all guilted into trying to do.
We’re no more unbalanced, or stressed, or amoral, or self-centered, or whatever other thing the media is getting people worked up over this week than generations past have been. I suspect the difference is that now we can talk to hundreds or thousands of people about it on a daily basis rather than the dozen or so our grandparents chatted with, so it just seems like a bigger problem.
Gabrielle´s last blog ..Sidetracked
Sounds like you’re obsessed with obsessions
Mark´s last blog ..Super Simple Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Beginners
@danman:
You never miss a chance to promote socialism, huh?
@Gabrielle:
Fair point. There definitely are detestable jobs.
In an ideal society we’d either have robots doing them, or gave people who do them so much respect and gratitude that it would make them worth it… but yeah, the world is as it is :p
That being said, I believe anybody can find work they truly love.
Most people just don’t want it badly enough (or have limiting beliefs and such stopping them). Which makes it possible for those who DO really want work they love to find it.
Also – anybody who’s in a position to be reading this blog definitely has enough freedom to be doing something they love.
Yeah, I know I haven’t convinced you. Just wanted to present my side of the issue for neutral third-party readers
@Mark:
Uh, so I have a short-term obsession with long-term obsession with short-term obsessions… or… wait…
Personally, I think you are obsessed with 30 day Challenges but then maybe that’s your life goal – to complete as many of them as possible before you go tobogganing down Mount Everest just for the hell of it
only to discover it wasn’t quite the right choice!
I like this theory, short term obsessions and focus is a great way to be productive and fulfilled. Very abundant indeed.
Having just one passion is a very myopic way to look at the world. We need different interests and passions to balance our life and make it interesting. That’s what keeps you motivated for more…waiting to see what life will bring you next.
simply stephen´s last blog ..environmental burden of online media
I think my point was,more simply… *anybody*, yes… *everybody*, no. There just aren’t enough lovable jobs to go around. If only.
Gabrielle´s last blog ..Sidetracked
Vlad, thanks for picking this one up and running with it! I actually agree with you here: I quite like to throw myself into mini-obsessions.
(At the moment, I’m in Oxford with my fiance and parents, doing grown-up things like viewing houses and talking to the vicar about our wedding … and I just want to be writing my novel
)
I loved the opening of this post, yes, work/life balance is missing the point. I suppose for me it’s about a doing/being balance. “Work” isn’t for me the capitalist/Protestant Work Ethic style of “work”, instead, it’s something more like self-fulfillment or creative expression.
Ali Hale´s last blog ..Review: Premium Planners (Charlie Gilkey)
@Simply Stephen:
Nooo, you discovered my darkest secret! I am obsessed with 30-day challenges! And I was trying to hide my obsession by writing this post…
*sob* *sob* *whimper*
(Actually, one of my core values is diversity, which is why I enjoy trying new habits so much.)
@Gabrielle:
Ah, ok. I guess we agree, then!
@Ali:
And thank you for the inspiration!
Hmm… now that I’m thinking of it, maybe I could stop using the word work completely. It might be one of the evil words with too many connotations
(See this – Evil Words to Avoid)
Maybe I could start calling it my passion or something.
“Hey, sorry I didn’t call you, I was busy passioning on my new blog post…”
Okay, maybe not :p
I’ve always been one of those people who gets those short-term obsessions, most notably with bands. Those obsessions translate themselves into what I listen to, what I talk about online and with my friends, and of course, what music I feel like writing and playing. I can’t help but feel like it gets annoying after a while, and since I feel like that every time I get one of these obsessions, I feel guilty about each and every one.
It’s safe for me to say I’ve never thought about short-term obsessions as positive before I read this. Thanks for the insights, my inspiration attribute just increased by 1! (I have some things I need to do with my own blog now.)
Clyde Machine´s last blog ..A Lesson to be Learned: Critical Thinking Teaches
@Clyde:
Awesome! I’m glad you’re opening your mind to the possibility of short-term obsessions being great!
@vlad
Yup, i have noticed that sometimes, pushing hidden agenda is easier if, well, it is not hidden
i believe that people who talk about work life balance actually address people who work all day instead of doing other important duties, nice thoughts pal
@Farouk:
I find that people who talk about work/life balance usually try to talk THEMSELVES into having a work/life balance. Give that some thought.
I may be in a different life place than most of you, but I think that people who talk about work/life balance are coming from a family. I work so that I can have enough funds to be obsessed about my real job, being a parent. I have purposed that work always comes second. Yes I need to do it, and I do a good job at it, but if “work” starts causing rifts in the thing I care about then it is time for different work.
@Jason:
Ah, so your top value would be family. And then you work so you can provide for the family, which at the same time takes you away from your family. Sounds about right?
I’m not saying there’s an easy solution (or that you’re doing anything wrong). You sound like you’re managing quite fine, actually.
Just wanted to show how that fits with what I was saying
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