You might expect an executive coach like Neil Samuels to champion work-life balance. Instead, he’s quite sure it’s a false dichotomy — one he’s eager to help professionals see.
The thing about human beings, Samuels explained to me over the phone this summer, is that we don’t have work and life as though the two can be extracted from each other, or as though they are equal but separate parts of what it is to be human. In other words, each person has, obvious as it may seem, one life.
Work is part of it, not separate from it.
In the dichotomy, work not only stands opposite to life but seemingly only refers to that which earns an income. Life is forced to encompass all that doesn’t result in a paycheck, as though 50 percent of the human experience is making money and 50 percent is everything else, none of which is categorized as work.
Peeling back just a layer or two beneath the work-life balance concept tends to reveal a lack of awareness around one’s choices, or, as Samuels puts it, one’s locus of control. Whether work-life balance is touted as one’s ever-elusive aspiration or bemoaned as an impossible daydream, it’s likely tempting us to believe that we are doing all we can do to thrive both at work and in life, when in fact we are likely making unacknowledged choices with unexamined consequences.
When Samuels works with executives, for example, he often hears that they wish they had better work-life balance.
“Do you like the money that comes with being an executive?” Samuels will ask.
“Yes,” they inevitably reply.
“Does your spouse like all that the money provides?”
“Yes.”
If you think this is pushing on a vulnerable spot, just wait. He doesn’t stop there, though it’s important to note that Samuels speaks with gentleness, letting the truth arise through curiosity. He seems to be diligently attuned to what makes humans human, which perhaps is what compels him to ask executives if they like being in a position of power. In other words, he asks them what they’re choosing.
For people with a lot of privilege — such as those in high-powered professional positions — a desire for greater leisure or family time may be genuine, but the lack of desire to make the changes required for that reality to occur may be stronger. For people whose choices are far more limited, such as the immigrant who works two jobs and spends her nights in a GED classroom, wishing she weren’t missing yet another night of tucking her children into bed, awareness of agency and choice can actually serve as a relief as such a person realizes that what she is doing may be costing personally in the short-term, but it is in service of the life she wants for her family members and herself.
At work and play, in family relationships and friendships and everything else, we can’t control everything. But, especially for those with material privilege, there are choices that are entirely ours to make. They may look like turning down the promotion while the kids are little. It may look like becoming the company president in full recognition of the fact that workweeks will be closer to 80 hours than 40. The myth of 50 percent “work” and 50 percent “life” is, well, just that. A myth.
Perhaps in honestly embracing our God-given agency, sense of purpose, and desires, we’ll find ourselves less consumed with the idea of a perfectly mixed formula, and more in tune with who God has called us to be vocationally, relationally, and everywhere in between.