Work Life Balance-The Tree Way

A very well-known and favorite connotation of today’s professionals which is being referred by everyone be it a job seeker, an employer, an employee or for that matter HR professionals too is ‘WORK LIFE BALANCE’.

But the question is what exactly we mean by work life balance? Mostly we refer it to as no stretched working hours, no working on holidays and no carrying of work to home for which we heap the responsibility on the shoulders of either the organization or its culture or the manager.

But actually speaking these are not the only factors for disturbed balance between our professional life and personal life. There is something else also attached to it. Let’s understand it by means of a story:-

There was a carpenter named Mohan. He lived in a town called Kurusat. He had a small and happy family comprising of his wife and 2 kids aged 5 and 7 years. Mohan belongs to a very mediocre family wherein his ancestors were also into carpentry business and spent their daily livelihood by working on daily paid basis. Mohan was associated with a contractor for his project assignments and was paid wages on hourly basis.

One Sunday Mohan got an assignment at Raj’s place. Raj was working with a reputed organization at a mid to senior level position. Mohan reached his place by 9.00am, understood the work to be done by Raj and started taking out his tools. When he plugged in his machine, he found that it’s not starting. He did some R&D but still it didn't work and owing to Sunday no technician was available for repair. So he had to drop his day and return back home. When he called up the contractor to inform this, the contractor was immensely angry and scolded him to check his machine a day prior. Mohan, with a heavy heart of losing his daily wage for that day, informed Raj about his inability to complete the work. Raj noticed the sadness on his face and hence followed him till gate. Now when Mohan tried starting his Luna, he found that it has got some technical problem and because of which it is not starting. Again being Sunday, the mechanic was not available. Raj was observing him from behind. He asked Mohan to drop him till home. On the entire way Mohan was upset, sad and didn't utter a single word.

On reaching, Mohan invited Raj to visit his home and have a cup of tea to which Raj agreed. While entering, Mohan touched a tree trunk outside his home and thereby entered. As soon as Mohan entered his home, Raj noticed a drastic change in his behavior. He happily called his wife and introduced her to Raj, hugged his both kids with joy and started talking to them. After having tea, when Mohan came to see off Raj near his car, Raj asked him why he touched the trunk of tree before entering home. Is it part of any tradition or what? To this, Mohan smiled and replied that this tree is his TROUBLE TREE. Every evening, when he returns from work, he hangs his worries/problems/overheads of work on it and thereby enters home. While daily next morning while he leaves for work, he takes it back from tree. He added: - “Believe me sir; the load is lesser as compared to which I hung last night”. On the entire journey back to his home, Raj was thinking about Mohan’s incredible practice and felt highly enlightened by this incidence.

Work life balance has lot to do with our internal factors like behavior, attitude, and mindset. External factors are not in our hand but remember internal factors are guided by our own-self. Everyone of us shall have a trouble tree with us wherein we can hang our professional life worries/backlogs and do not allow them to fade away/take away the happiness and involvement of our personal life.  To have a balance between personal and professional life; it is necessary for us to keep both lives discretely apart from each other. Its all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and family and friends. Ultimately life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

“Never get so busy making a living that we forget to make a life…”

 Stay Balanced; Stay Carefree