“Work-life balance” has become a pretty buzzy topic among employees. Everyone wants to achieve some semblance of balance between the time they spend working and the time they devote to other aspects of their lives.
Unfortunately, for many people, this is difficult to achieve. One woman suggested that for full-time workers, it’s actually impossible.
A full-time employee didn’t believe it’s possible to achieve work-life balance.
A TikTok creator named Bianca shared her thoughts on the reality of work-life balance when working a full-time job.
“FYI, work-life balance does not exist,” she argued. “Those two words combined — it’s a joke.”
At this point in the video, Bianca inserted a caption that said, “More than two words. My bad. It’s 7 a.m.” This, of course, could have been a subtle sign of burnout from her own lack of work-life balance.
“So if you’re over here telling yourself you have a good work-life balance … but you, like, you’re working a full-time job?” she asked. “Baby girl, baby boy, it’s not. It’s still … there’s no balance.”
“There’s no such thing. Bye,” she concluded.
Fellow TikTok users were quick to agree with Bianca.
“8-5 Monday to Friday,” one said. “You’re absolutely right. Too exhausted after work, and Friday gets here and I need two days to get back to feeling alive and it’s time to do it again. Awful, terrible cycle.”
Another commented, “Agreed. That’s why I’m so burnt out. I don’t even have kids! I give parents a lot of credit.”
“I legit came to the realization this morning that I don’t hate working, I hate being stuck in a lifeless office five days a week,” a third person added.
Most are in agreement that work-life balance isn’t a real thing.
In an article for LinkedIn, Sales Executive Alyssa Fitzpatrick wrote, “Now that I’m entering a new stage of life, I’ve realized that ‘balance’ isn’t really the end goal anyway. In fact, I don’t believe it even exists!” Further noting, “The truth is we will always have demands that divide our time and attention, often unequally. And as our post-pandemic world continues to blur the lines between ‘work’ and ‘life,’ it’s clear we need a new approach to finding joy and fulfillment, even when our schedules are skewed.
The lines haven’t gotten so blurred that ADP started using the term work-life integration to replace work-life balance. Experts argue that unless and until workers start acknowledging that there cannot and will not be a complete separation of work life and private life in our modern world, they will continue to struggle with burnout.
Ultimately, their solution is to find harmony in the integration, or it will eat you alive.
Looking at your life as being divided into two categories isn’t helpful.
Writing for Psychology Today, Laurence J. Stybel concurred. He cited David J. McNeff’s book “The Work-Life Balance Myth” as proof that it does not exist.
In McNeff’s book, instead of dividing everything into these two categories of work and life, he created seven more flexible ones instead.
This, Stybel said, gets right to the heart of the problem.
“The conventional way of thinking about work-life balance in binary terms presents a zero-sum game,” he asserted. “Increasing time to spend with family means less time for managing one’s career. But if you don’t take care of your career, you will not be able to provide for your family. It is a circular way of framing the problem.”
In other words, by looking at the full spectrum of life as being split into only work and everything else, you’re getting into a vicious cycle.
While we would all like to believe work-life balance is something that is real and achievable, it seems like it is harder to attain than ever before.
As technology continues to move at such a fast pace, this trend will likely continue.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.
