“To have it all” - Work & Family Balance

The question women secretly ask themselves:

“Can we really have it all?

Can we balance between our fast-paced careers and our hectic family life? Is it even possible?”

The answer: It depends.

What do you define ‘balance’ as? What is having it all?

Is it to perform adequately or excel in both areas or is it to beable to attain the lifestyle attained by our male counterparts?

What if the missing piece to this complex puzzle is not necessarily to do exactly what men themselves do, but rather understand how their mechanism works? If you are like the countless women today who say, “we want to live like men”, where they ‘supposedly’ can balance perfectly between their careers and family, and can even get a good night sleep at the end of the day, then let us look at this from a whole other perspective.

Many of the stereotypical households - where the man comes back late and exhausted from a successful day at work, spends time with his family over dinner then rests until the next day – indicates that men have inherently used a technique which has given them comfort in their lifestyle. They may spend time with their loved ones but that quality time is not what mothers would define as exceling in the family life, but rather the adequate performance of the bare minimum. In this scenario, men have prioritized their efforts, mostly investing themselves qualitatively in work and quantitatively with their family.

Now I’m not criticizing this technique, on the contrary, Iapplaud men for making peace with their priorities. But rather it is like they say, balancing work, sleep & a social life equally is near impossible. Therefore whatever priority we set, whether it is sleep and work or a social life and sleep, the lowest on the priority list shall have the least performance by default. Thus you can choose which stages of your life you would prefer to perform qualitatively in one area and quantitatively in another, and then you could shift it where you deem it fit. It must be noted that prioritizing does not mean that you are sacrificing your whole career life to nurture your family, but rather that you have control of when you are to perform adequately and in which areas.

To perform less than your optimum doesn’t necessarily mean that the performance is less than average, yet that is what we are all afraid of. So the question we ask ourselves, is prioritizing -hence having a relative balance in performance - a good enough solution especially for those who seek to touch the stars?

My answer again is, it depends.

What is reaching the stars to you? Is it to be happy and comfortable? Or is it -like the millennial generation likes to put it- making a greater change?

This is why it all depends. You are the main factor in this equation, what do you want?