By: Jasintha Kunasegaram

For many years, we Canadians have played many different roles in our lives. As years go by, our roles only add up, and never reduce. Hence, it’s hard to make some time to do what we are used to like doing. Surprisingly, some are able to find a balance in their work and life. But unfortunately others are still trying.

According to a blog post on “The Tyranny of Performance” by “Allison Wolf”, she states that the word balancing can be misleading, and how it seems to say that one needs to focus on achieving a certain amount on either side of life and work, to be able to achieve a balancing equation. She believes that, the overall quality of our entire life is important, more than trying hard to balance both side of the equation.

Where she goes on explaining, what we do every day influences how we view our quality of life. For instance, when both activities are fulfilling we tend to feel really good about our day and or life. But when our lives become very hard for us to handle, we tend to run into health issues and performance challenges.

Allison Wolf adds a text reference that explains how the connection between performance, learning and enjoyment is affected. She quotes this text from “The Inner Game of Work” by Timothy Gallwey’s book.

It is obvious to most people who emphasizing performance doesn’t make it happen. Quite the contrary is true. The three sides of the work triangle are part of an interdependent system. When either the learning or the enjoyment side is ignored, performance will suffer in the long run. When it does, management feels threatened and pushes even harder for performance. Learning and enjoyment diminish even further. A cycle ensues that prevents performance from ever reaching its potential.

She lastly focuses on how most law firms’ focus on performances, and the one who just got into the firm may find it hard to sustain that balance in life. They may be likely to put more effort into work rather than spending time with their loved one or by themselves, just so they can perform exceptionally well. Thus, their energy would be all drained out by the time they are done for the day.

Consequently, I agree with her statements that she have provided in her blog. I believe that balancing life and work can be tough sometimes. But it’s up to us to figure out, how to use the time adequately. With that being said, here are some things that one can do to have a healthy balance in life according to the Protecting and Insuring Your Health.

• Build downtime into your schedule
• Drop activities that affect your time or energy
• Rethink the time frame you have given for the work you have to do
• Exercise
• Relax at least once a week

If not, I highly suggest you check out this website online by clicking “14 Steps to Achieving Work-life Balance”.

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