The Fallacy of the Work/Life Balance | Michael Walters | TEDxGustavusAdolphusCollege

Through his work, Walters challenges the status quo, inspires paradigm shifts in both business and individual lives, and mentors many young professionals all while sharing his passion and abilities to ideate, engage, lead change, and deliver measurable results.

Mr. Walters is the President of studio503, Vice President and National Account Director of the Coin-Tainer Company, and in 2013 became a member of the Board of the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce in Minnesota (SACC-MN). Through his work, Walters challenges the status quo, inspires paradigm shifts in both business and individual lives, and mentors many young professionals all while sharing his passion and abilities to ideate, engage, lead change, and deliver measurable results.

[allisterbernal]

Moral of the story: corporations run your work, corporations run your life. Enjoy, guys!

[artravision]

There is truth in this for me. When I take a positive step in any area of my life I get past inertia and other parts of my life start to improve also. It is when I resent parts of my life that I get weighed down with negative energy.

[GoNzo]

Even a standard "9 to 5" is starting to go extinct. It's so normal for people to work 10-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week. So crazy

[JPalermo]

This is a good definition of not knowing what balance means

[shilohartisan]

I watched this entire thing and yet by the end i still have to work [X] hours per day and sleep [Y] hours per day and i have [Z] hours per day for everything else. Since sleep can't really change much that means I have to decide where to put my time, Work, or everything else. Every minute I give to everything else takes a minute form work. Every minute I give to work takes from everything else. I feel like he didn't say a single thing that addressed any of this.

24 hours = [X] + [Y] + [Z]

[Z] could be broken down into [A] + [B] + [C] + [D] + [E] + [F] + [G] + But that isn't the point. Nor are we talking about making sure [X] = [Z] that's not what we mean by balance.

If you're able to work 2 hours and have 14 for everything else then do that. Some of us have to work 10 hours and only have 6 for everything else. But most of us have some kind of choice of taking a little from one to give to the other and whether the ratio is 1:1 or 50:1 we still have to decide how to divide it up and that is what we mean by "balance" and this guy, again, said absolutely nothing pertinent to that very real dilemma we all face.

[luzzy.]

I'm a student watching this as a work assignment plz make it fun next time

[stemdan]

Proudly brought to you by the CEO and Shareholders Association of America

[janehanvey]

All of us live a multifaceted life. I like the his analogy and perspective: always choose positive action now over procrastination and life will provide better balance.

[jw]

This guy was hired by some corporate overlord to persuade people to keep working no matter what. Plot twist: this is a Walmart employee convention

[EmeliaSings]

The biggest takeaway from me, is momentum. Choosing to do what you know you should do today, instead of the easy path that you know will leave you with more work tomorrow. When you do one thing, you'll be more inclined to keep going on that good path in other areas of life. Keep that ball rolling in the direction you want. Every single choice you make, is basically you voting for the person you will become in the future. So, who do you want to be?

[dijviddijvid]

Even though it has a strong mind, a donkey's back gets broken when the load on its back is too heavy.

[shanesorensen]

He's actually wrong about work life balance. Working long hours and sending emails after work is actually been shown to be unhealthy. I think that spending time with family is important and having personal time.

[Mybusinessmylife-community]

What he is saying is basically correct, I just don't think he is explaining it sufficiently so that everyone here "get's it!"

He is correct, work is a part of life, it is not separate from it. And that is why work/life balance is a fallacy. You can have life without work, but you certainly can't have work without life. It is ridiculous to try and separate them and try to balance them.

Therefore I think the sealed bowl with the balls in it and them all moving in harmony and interacting with each other is a fair and accurate visual representation. And while there are many facets to our life, there are also many facets to our work, so saying that just one ping pong ball represents our work, as a whole, out of 50 or more others is not a good example.

However, we do have nine primary areas in our life, and work is just one of them, so a bowl of nine balls rather than 50 or 100, whatever, would give a far better indication.

And the general concept is that work/life balance, if it does exist, is all about time - shorter working hours, flexibility to structure work hours or location, work that doesn’t disrupt home life, ability to time-bank, and no overtime, etc. So that's great, we get home from work early and use that extra free time to catch up on more TV, get into play-station or some other "stress-free" endeavour. But is that REALLY creating more balance in your life??? Or more importantly, is it really improving your life and the life of your loved ones around you?

But when you are looking at the larger glass ball, (our life as a whole) moving forward, you can see the energies, interaction and harmony generated between the seperate balls within it. 

Forget trying to measure and balance the time spent between activities, because "work life balance" wrongly focuses on time management. 

You will also never achieve a balanced life, it just can’t be done - nor should you want to if you want to move forward. Remember, the very first steps we take each and every day put us off balance. We cannot continue to move forward without first leaning into each step and putting ourselves off balance.

Harmony focuses on energy management. It focuses on all nine areas of our life holistically, It is the use, flow and direction of that energy that allows us to step ahead.

If you want more out of life, forget balance, look to the flow and harmony of your energies between all areas of your life and plan and adjust your life around them.

[seanuptown]

This guy lost my interest when he picked up the 2nd ball

[kevinhatten]

Here is the definition of balance - a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. A good life balance doesn’t mean work doesn’t exist, it means understanding which is more important and being able to manage both, but give your energy to having a life outside of your job.

[Abaleth]

An incongruous, illogical and dangerous bit of nonsense.

There's a false equivalence drawn right at the beginning between ones duty to ones spouse, one's children and one's job. A spouse or children are attached to a person by bonds of love and are rightly regarded as inherently valuable things in a person's life. A job is a monetary contract between person and employer, although loyalty between employee and employer can be good and rewarding, the level of duty isn't there. They are *not* the same category of thing.

It uses this assertion to suggest that if you criticise your job, and get rid of it, you'll do it to everything in your life. Even if the assertion that job was like marriage and children were true, this wouldn't follow; not every divorcee hates their kids. The first statement isn't true though, and so it's revealed as a rather shaky bit of alarmist, which claims that if you criticise your employer, you're in danger of destroying your life. Not true, a wise person looks at their employer honestly, and if they're not good, they change job.

It then moves to an idea of "whatever the hour, do the work, things will get better". This just isn't necessarily true. If an employee is in an exploited situation, showing willingness to do things outside of the reasonable, will only encourage their exploiter.

Even in non-exploitative, good jobs, working really hard may well result in promotion, more money, and more responsibility. That can be a really good thing, and can be the basis for an entire worthwhile life. However, there isn't some automatic harmony where this works well with other parts of life. If you're in the office, you're not at home. If you're checking emails every 3 minutes, you're not focusing on your kid's school play; if you have to take a conference call at 11pm you're probably not really enjoying your 10th wedding anniversary.

It's good when employers allow flexibility for workers' lives, and sometimes its necessary to miss a bit of outside life to ensure work's okay. However, this talk isn't suggesting an alternative to work-life balance. This talk is asserting the absolute goodness of work, trying to scare the life out of anyone who criticises it, and then suggesting that anybody who ever doesn't want to work at some point is doing something morally wrong. It's dishonest, scaremongering, corporate propaganda.

[mamazelle]

A work-life balance to me means performing well at work, enjoying it and going home and spending quality time.

[cynthiamarquez]

A shorter work week would be better.
Think how much easier life would be with a standard 32 hour week

[tomcata]

It's a big fallacy, for people are working longer and longer hours, at greater productivity, sometimes working several jobs rather than one, which results in bigger profits for the corporation, and top executives who siphon large bonuses at the expense of lower wages for the grunts, and when the grunts age, and are older, the company gets rid of them and hires younger, works for even less. No more gold watches or 20 defined pensions. When the corporation is done with you you are on your own. They call it personal responsibility.

[mickadatwist]

he must be an employer and not an employee