Unbalanced

Balancing our careers and outside lives is easily one of the biggest and most prevailing struggles that face professionals of any age.  It is one of the few things that I have in common with our most senior partners.  Even though I know the work-life balance comes up a lot with lawyers, I’m not egomaniacal enough to think that we have a monopoly.  In fact, what made me decide to write on this topic was a conversation I had with a non-lawyer friend who asked for advice. 

Here’s the situation.  She’s been in a high-stress, extremely busy (24 hour days) job since about June.  She was planning to take a break during the holidays and go visit her family but a couple days ago she received an offer to be immediately placed on another high-pressured project that would last about 3 weeks.  Unlike most of us, she actually has a choice, so rather than just complaining about it and resigning herself to her fate, she had to weigh her options and make an adult decision.  Clearly, she went to the wrong person for advice.

So here’s how we broke it down.  On the positive side, this would be an incredible opportunity and a project she’s wanted for a while.  If she turns it down now, she may have an opportunity to do it in the future, but she may not.  The negatives are that she’s already tired (I could actually hear the weariness in her voice), she was really looking forward to taking a break and she hasn’t seen her family in a long time.  She also has a new project starting in January, which will once again keep her busy until at least next July.

By the time she came to me with the question, as we usually do, she was clearly leaning one way.  She wanted to turn it down.  She wanted to go home and be with family and recharge her batteries (yes, she’s a robot).   But she needed to talk it out because she had this nagging feeling that she was not being faithful to her career.  That she was somehow derailing her chances.  That it was wrong for a young professional to ever choose rest and family (i.e. life) over work.

My question: why do we have to see it as an exchange of one for the other?  Why is time spent on your life necessarily bad for your career?  Clearly, if my friend took every opportunity she was given, she would have a stellar career for about 2 years, at which point she would have a heart-attack or jump off a bridge.  Either way, it wouldn't be good for career anymore.

Countless studies and reports have documented that a good work-life balance benefits both the employee and the employer.  It makes common sense.  The cliché that happy employees are better and more productive employees is a cliché for a reason, it’s true.  Happier employees will be more likely to throw themselves into their projects, work longer hours without diminishing returns and stay with the company who will ultimately benefit from their experience and efforts.  On the flipside, unhappy workers are more likely to procrastinate, waste time, and ultimately leave (as an example, just see Biglaw’s huge turnover rate).

Unfortunately, U.S. companies are far too slow in comprehending this idea. Instead, they've convinced us, and in turn we've convinced ourselves, that going home to see your family over the holidays is a detriment rather than an overall benefit to our professional lives.