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The Work-Life Balance Conundrum

Recently the can of worms has been re-opened about women having it all. Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors said in an interview recently that it is possible to have it all, meaning being a CEO and a good mother, while Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, said it wasn’t possible.  These two interviews sparked another debate that is separate about why “having it all” is never an issue discussed for men.
 
Of course my mind is going 100 miles a minute with thoughts on this and I do have my own opinion on this matter, but ultimately the issue is work-life balance and that is an issue for everyone who works regardless of gender or family status.

Why would this be an issue for everyone? The reason is that our 21st century has more jobs that do not have a definitive starting and stopping point than it used to.  When I think about my parents and grandparents, there were many jobs that started at a certain time and ended at a certain time, such as in manufacturing jobs.  The whistle blew work started. The whistle blew again and work stopped.

How we work now is different. People work from home in their underwear.  Many jobs are project based and the worker controls the quantity of work per day. Many jobs are not 9 to 5, but may work for a couple hours in the morning with a large break in the middle, think school bus driver or traffic reporter. Then there are the jobs with non-traditional start times due to the international nature of the business. Of course we cannot leave out retail and healthcare that are 24 hour, non-stop operations. All this means that how we view our work-life balance is difficult for everyone, not just women CEOs.
 
For me, there are many questions I could personally contemplate on this subject? How much time should I spend blogging about workforce development on my off hours vs. how much time I should be spending with my family could be a concern for me. Is it possible to miss one school function without penalty? Would it look bad if only one parent attended?  I want to give 100% to everything in my life- not just my career or my family, but give 100% to my health, and ultimately make time for myself.  Yikes! It seems so overwhelming, but I am not alone.

It doesn’t matter that I am a female writing this and I have a family.  A person does not have to be CEO to contemplate the balance between working time and not working time. A person can be single and have the same issue. Why? The reason is that the same wonderful technology that makes blogging possible and playing games more fun is what makes it also possible to work from anywhere at any time.  Being that we are humans and not robots, we cannot just go through the motions without rest.
 
The future of work in this country displays that the work-life balance will forever be a conundrum. Employers will have to adapt. Workers will have to adapt. Families and friends will have to adapt. Our pets will have to adapt. 
 
This is such a big subject that has so many viewpoints. I could go on all day and make a case for having it all and not having it all, making time for work and play, playing where we work, and working while playing, but rather than write all day, I am going to let you decide what works for you.  Each worker will have to figure this out and then find the right fit in the 24 hour, 7 day work week world. Welcome to workforce development in the 21st century! We will not only face these issues in our personal lives, but we will be counseling our job seekers and screening employers on this issue.
 
If anyone has any comments or questions, please feel free to comment below. The wonderful thing is that while I am busy participating in either work-life or not-work life, my readers can be posting below. Thank you technology. Thank you for spending some of you work or not-work time reading this. If you would like to reach me, you can email me also at kcirincione@gmail.com. ~Karen Cirincione

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