Work/Life Balance is Out.  Work/Life Integration is In.  And it’s Attainable.

As women executives, we constantly struggle with trying to have some sort of balance in our lives.  The media would have us believe that somehow, if we do the right things, have the right partner, and make the right choices, we can achieve something called Work/Life Balance and all will be awesome.  Until then, many of us feel like failures on every front, as this ideal balance eludes us.

I was especially encouraged when I was forwarded an article by a client recently on this topic that I thought made great sense and offered some helpful tips from well-known execs who have been able to integrate work and life on their terms.

What is Work/Life Integration?  How does it differ from Work/Life Balance?

For many of us, the lines between our jobs and our home have blurred with the ability to stay connected at all times.  Rather than looking at our lives and our careers as mutually exclusive, integrating them to provide some sort of quality of life has become the trend among execs.  This differs from the past where the emphasis seemed to be on segmenting our lives into different pieces, family, work, personal, and having the expectation that each of those pieces should be perfectly managed, considered separate from one another.  And if not, we risked being considered failures. Remember the article Why Women Still Cant Have It All?  That article was focused on how these different parts of our lives could be managed so that we could be perfect in all aspects.  A very high bar to reach, and resulting for many in the feeling of failure.

Business Insider interviewed 17 successful executives on the topic for their tips on how they integrate work into life without having to sacrifice one over the other.  The key is not being forced to sacrifice or prioritize one over the other because they integrate with one another.

Perfection is not the goal here;  rather having a quality life is.

Seven of our favorite integration tips

1.  Flexibility is your friend.  Work doesn’t have to just happen at an office.  It doesn’t matter where you are physically, as long as the work gets done. Maybe you leave work in time for dinner with your family.  This might require working after dinner for a few hours to finish the work.  As long as the work is completed, it shouldn’t matter where you are.

2.  Weave your personal and professional lives together.  If your priority is to be present at a child’s soccer game, maybe this means checking work email while you watch.  For some execs, blurring the lines between work and life is helpful.

3.   Don’t miss the Crystal moments, but its ok to miss the Rubber ones.  Make it a priority to make all the major life events of your family, but don’t beat yourself up for missing the more common events.

4. Be nimble. Know that as work and life needs change, your attention to those will have to change.  Give 100% of your attention where its needed most at the moment.

5. Unplug and be Present.  Conversely, some of the execs completely shut work down when they are with family.  They avoid work distractions by not checking email or their phones when it’s family time.

6.  Don’t beat yourself up. For many of us, we love our careers, and we love our families.  There are choices we have to make on both fronts at times that mean compromise.  Don’t beat yourself up over them.  Move on.

7.  Stay true to your priorities.  If your priority is your family and you need to make hard choices some times, stay true to what is most important to you.

In a Harvard Business Review article on the topic of Work and Life integration, interviews with six highly successful people showed that their career success was achieved because of commitments at home, in the community, and in the rest of their lives, not at the expense of the rest of their life.  Each of the individuals interviewed integrated work and life in a way that worked best for them, personally.  This suggests that each of us can be successful in a way that fits who we are, and our own way is the only way that will work for us personally.  We get to chose how life intersects with our careers, and for each of us it will be different.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help businesswomen live life on their terms, and how best to leverage your business or career for quality of life, please reach out to us at WealthChoice.