Work and Life Balance

In her article, Miya Tokumitsu states that most people who follow the principle “do what you love” become self-centered. Being focused on ourselves and our happiness, as the author says, make us prouder than we ought to be. As a result, we create a division between those who love their jobs and those who do not. The writer defends those who do not love their jobs by claiming that not all jobs are enjoyable yet are socially necessary.

American entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, once said: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Some people may take a job out of necessity rather than being passionate about their work. You have to love what you do as you spend more time working than being with loved ones. In Studs Terkel’s Working, adapted by Harvey Pekar, the reader is presented with visual adaptations of the lives of ordinary Americans that show how they feel about what they do for a living ranging from farmers, miners, barbers, box boys, and a hooker are some of the jobs mentioned in the novels. The author gives the

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. “ Those words, spoken by Confucius, represent the goal of not only mine, but many others when it comes to finding your true calling. The voyage to find your purpose in life can be quite difficult. Often times this journey proves too challenging and forces an individual to give up all together and instead settle for something easier to obtain and inferior to their original goal. This can commonly lead to feelings of unfulfillment and regret in the choices you have made. It’s not until you find your true calling that you go from thinking about your job as something that you have to do to something that you love doing.

I believe that we can ‘have it all at the same time.’” (Dorment 699). However, the reason why men and women cannot have it all because they have work and life same time. Richard said, “Entirely lost in this debate is the growing strain of work-life balance on men, who today are feeling the competing demands of work and home as much or more than women. And the truth is as shocking as it is obvious:

Ha! Who would?ve thought that I of all people would be blogging about work life balance. I constantly feel as though I have a million things on my plate and that I?m struggling to keep up. Through my participation in clubs, work, and school, my mind is constantly worrying about something. My go-go-go mentality has been like this for about a year now, and I need a change ASAP. It?s to the point where I?m sacrificing my own mental sanity for my jobs and schoolwork.

In the video, How to find a Job you Love, it talks about how we need to find a job that we would enjoy, even if we screw it up. The video explains that if we are passionate for something, we should might as well make it as our job. In his video, he says, “But you’re doing work that embodies who you are.” In, The Fall, the main character loved his job, but for the wrong reasons. Although it was mostly for fame, he did it so he could get something out of it. “But, seen from the outside, it looked rather like a passion.” He did it for the opposite reasons that most people would. When we choose what to do with the rest of our lives, we should most likely choose something we would genuinely enjoy, not to get something out of

There has always been a common misconception that we must work hard to find success. In some cases this is true. However according to Ellen Goodman in her article “The Company Man” success is not measured through how many hours a person works a week, but how we choose to live our life. Goodman’s article targets the atypical hard working middle class who tend to dedicate their entire lives to their job; in this case a 51 year old workaholic man named Phil who worked himself to death. She explains how the life’s of these type of people slowly deteriorates. She describes Phil as an overweight man who has no hobbies nor is involved with anything out side of work including his family. We must evaluate what is important in life and not have our whole lives revolve around work. It is important we prioritize family, have hobbies, and realize that we are just an employee nothing else.

If your work life is stressful, overwhelming, and you have a had a hard time at work recently, it will cross over and affect your family life if you do not have a balance between the two. If you are having a marital conflict, like filing for a divorce, it can affect your mood that you have at work and you will not work as well as you have in the past. Balance is a great work, every time I think of balancing work and family I think of a weighting scale (the one with the stand in the middle and the two bowls, one on each side of the stand), this visual helps me see how an unbalanced work and family life can negatively effect everyone around

The reason why I am asking this question is because we have so many things we like and passions in our life, but we are not able to do our passions and things that we like to do because we have to do our work, manage your family and stay involved in our social life. When we

Confucius once said “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” I believe that he was onto something when he said this. I feel that when searching for your career path is important to find something you’re passionate about, something that fulfills you. This is why I have chosen to study to become a Medical Assistant. When I was a few years younger, I worked as a caregiver for the elderly. This was at times very tiring and heartbreaking work but at the end of the day it was so satisfying to go home knowing I had been able to bring others happiness and comfort. There is nothing like seeing the difference

One of the key things that Christiansen touches on in his article is the allocation of resources. You cannot do everything, but you should try a have a large impact on the right things. I will make sure to create a balance in my life, both home and professional. I will need to focus on both and be prepared the sometimes the gains may not be immediate in either aspect, but by putting time and work in I will be more motivated and happy at both. Putting in a disproportionate amount of time and energy will only lead to an imbalance that would potentially get worse and worse. Right from the beginning I will make sure to keep work life balance a high priority.

“In the Name of Love by Miya Tokumitsu uses “Do what you love” in choosing our life way, and DWYL is the motto of our generation, so we should do what we love being passion and profitable. Sometimes DWYL is not the best option, but people still do what they love, and they enjoy their job. Tokumitsu explains “work is work” we should respect that, and it doesn’t matter what kinds. However, everyone loves different things, if everyone tried to do what they loved who would do the other important jobs. Tokumitsu emphasizes don’t put down people that enjoy what they do because all jobs have valve.

Are you in turmoil as to what should be your choice in career? Are you worried about where you are headed in life and if you are ever going to be happy with your achievements?

A person spends the majority of their adult life at work, so why not make it a place where you are happy and fulfilled? Any successful job

As I get older, I find myself realizing I have spent too much time working. Being consumed by my work, I felt I was doing what needed to be done to support my family. This was a struggle for me because I thought I had to be the solution to the problems at work. This resulted in me being at home less and working more. In the article Downshifting, it talks about how culture has consumed leisure instead of creating it. “Today consumerism has consumed us in the sense that we are trapped by money, and those elements of creativity and sociability found in leisure are disappearing” (Junui, quoted by Hemingway 2000). I had no balance between work and family life. This was not healthy for my relationship with my family. My job continued to take advantage of that weakness. According to a reading from Pieper, “’intellectual work’-the exaggerated value which is put upon the ‘difficult’ simply because it is ‘difficult’-becomes evident in the accentuation of a particular trait in the look of the ‘worker’: the fixed, mask-like readiness to suffer in vacuo, without relation to anything” (Pieper, 1952). This is referring to how my employer sees me as a hard worker and knows how to suck me in like a vacuum. I had continued support of family with the decisions I was making, but my family/work balance would not get any better.