Is there way to truly acheive work-life balance? We talk about the feasibility of it.
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30 Nov 2022
6 Min Read
Ailyn Low (Editor), Dr. Gan Jen Ling (Guest Contributor), Dr. Karen Tsen Mung Khie (Guest Contributor)
Is there way to truly acheive work-life balance? We talk about the feasibility of it.
In 2022, Kuala Lumpur was ranked the third most overworked city in the world in a report by Kisi, an access technology firm. So it’s no wonder that hustling has become a norm, especially in our Asian culture.
Long working hours, emphasis on a job well done if you overcommit to tasks, and dedication to the job now seems to be the bare minimum to succeed at the workplace. We’ve all heard of that one family member or friend skipping out on gatherings or personal events just to attend a work function or get things done.
Compared to our friends in the West, we undoubtedly pay a lot of emphasis on collective values and uphold the idea of sacrificing personal demands for the group’s benefit. Unfortunately, this has been inbred in us even in our days as students. Angela Chiew, a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communication alumni, states “I missed out on a lot of things, especially in different experiences. At this age, after graduation, I feel that it's too late to live it.”
With even the younger generation facing issues of balancing their life with work and academics, there are two main challenges preventing us from having a good work-life balance — our competitive environment and the hustle culture.
Pressured in a highly competitive environment
Indeed, in the technological era, speed and efficiency is everything. The average waiting time for a message reply is no longer a few hours, but a few minutes. We’re living in a world where doing your best is not good enough when everyone else is doing better. This often pushes us to do more than we can do just so that we’re achieving our goals and more.
While the hyper-competitive environment drives young adults to be outcome-oriented, are we jeopardising the importance of the journey? To add to that, when the competitive environment becomes stronger, so will the hustle game get stronger too, resulting in a vicious cycle at the cost of our mental health.
An emphasis on the hustle
“I think the ‘get-rich-quick’ mindset of today's youth is a formula for catastrophe,” Katrina Chelliah, a Computer Science student now, admits.
With many acknowledging that the hustling lifestyle would expose most of us to workplace stressors like task deadlines, emotional demands, or even competition between co-workers, it’s hard to not step out of the game when you’re constantly bombarded with how hustling is good and the way to move forward.
Hustle culture promotes that the more hours you work and the more you grind yourself, the more successful you are and will become. But because success is so subjective and there isn’t a standard way of what success means to each individual, it’s easy to fall into different mental health illnesses as we’d have no choice but to keep working 24/7, 365 days to achieve whatever notion of success. As a result, there’s a high chance of missing out on quality me-time or even time with one’s loved ones.
As social beings, having social support and interaction will help to boost one's mood and create a positive impact on one’s mental health. “We are too busy for that,” Andrea Ong, a Broadcasting and Business Entrepreneurship alumni, admits as she talks about how the hustle culture blocks us from having time for relationship building.
Did you know? 65% of Malaysians are willing to forgo higher pay and promotion for better work-life balance and overall well-being in The Great X report by Michael Page.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s evident that there’s been a bigger shift in priority to one with a more balanced life. It signifies one’s willingness to sacrifice personal and family time in exchange for work performance and career success. Yet, the hustle culture is, ironically, still well-celebrated on social media.
People who are lost about work-life balance often ask about the definition of it. Do a quick Google search and you’d find that it’s defined as, the division of one's time and focus between working and family or leisure activities. Some define it as having 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours of personal time — a perfect balance of the 24 hours you get in a day. But what does this really mean?
The truth is, there’s no right or wrong, no one true way to achieve a good work-life balance. You’d come across many different articles or publication preaching how you can practise work-life balance. However, steps that may work well for a group of people may not necessarily work well for others.
“Work-life balance will not be possible if we set specific rules or standards because different people or industries might have different needs,” Ali Moossajee, an alumni from the Bachelors of Quantity Surveying, admits. To many of us, having a work-life balance, is widely associated with the separation of professional and personal life by turning on and off the ‘work switch’ in our mind. But is it possible to have that complete separation from life and work?
Although defining what work-life balance is is challenging, there’s a ground rule of defining the general concept of it. Here are 2 questions you can focus on to identify the best way you can practise work-life balance.
1. What does quality time mean for you?
Work-life balance isn’t just about ensuring you spend equal time over your work and other areas in life. It’s the emphasis on relieving work’s fatigue regardless of the duration which focuses on the quality of time spent instead of quantity.
So, what does quality time mean for you? For some it may be working in small pockets of time but more frequently. For others, it may be blocking off a significant amount of hours and dedicating it purely to work so that they can completely wind down after work. When you find your suitable and unique way to spend quality personal time, you may feel less fatigue as opposed to sticking to the ‘ideal’ work-life balance way.
2. What are your life goals?
Balancing your working hours and leisure time is one thing. Ensuring that how you spend your time to meet your life goals is another. When your work and life goal is aligned, you are, in some sense, achieving work-life balance.
But figuring out your life goal might not come to you as easily as some others — and there’s no wrong there! However, it’s good to have some goals set or have in mind in order to form good habits that would allow you to utilise your time wisely.
The way we define work-life balance is crucial and what we think we know of it needs redefining. Without tailoring and making work-life balance work for us in our own unique may result in the lack of balance which, as a consequence, could affect your mental health. Sometimes, following the status-quo of what being balanced means can be imbalanced.
It’s time we take a step back, take the time to understand yourself better, and find your true answer to what a real work-life balance is.
Dr. Gan Jen Ling, Programme Director for the Master of Business Administration & Master of Management at Taylor's Business School. She also champions research that focuses on emotional intelligence which affects organisational justice and organisational citizenship behaviour.
Dr. Karen Tsen Mung Khie is a lecturer from Taylor's Business School. She champions research that focuses on work-life balance.
