YOUR COMMENTS: Maintaining a work/life balance - we should stop trying to be superhuman!
Vigilant self-policing is much easier said than done when professionals care about their work!
I speak as someone who gave up a consultancy job with nice company car etc after 5 months because I was travelling about 1,000 miles a week mostly in my own time and had to book a day’s holiday to get a weekend.
It was the job or my health and sanity, so I chose the latter. But now working for a college with generous holiday entitlement and flexi-time, I’m still suffering the same problem albeit to a lesser extent: difficulty keeping appointments and keeping to the 37 hours a week I get paid for.
Perhaps we all need assertiveness courses in looking after ourselves!My stress-relief mechanisms are things like running and rock-climbing, but I rarely get away early enough in the evening to do anything except eat and sleep on a weekday.
More fool me? There is definitely a strong culture of work in this country, but I can’t help the feeling that maybe we would all work better if we stopped trying to be superhuman and just got on with the possible.
It’s time to redress the balance