Vince

Balancing our work and personal life can be tough.

By Vincent Nguyen | May 2, 2023 1:25pm PST

A few years ago I had to attend a two-day training session for a postal position I applied for. My experience there was short lived as I left after the training was over because it wasn’t what I expected, but at least now I can share with you how it’s relevant for this topic.

There must’ve been about twenty of us new employees that were there that day.

One of the things we all had to do was briefly introduce ourselves, and so there was this one lady who really got me thinking about my life situation at the time.

It was nothing mind blowing or anything like that, but she basically left her high paying job at a major bank to become a mail carrier because she wasn’t physically active enough.

At that moment I was thinking to myself how strange it was that someone with a well paying job, that could spend their money how they please, essentially wanted to downgrade to improve something else in their life. Meanwhile, someone like me who was at the bottom, still living with my parents at the age of 29, no college degree, unemployed, could only dream of getting paid a good salary to live on my own, actually had something she desired.

You see, since I was unemployed and needed a way to stay active consistently without breaking the bank (like paying for a gym membership), I pretty much went jogging through various neighbourhoods for roughly an hour and fifteen minutes almost every day.

At one point, I remember I had a tiny hole underneath my running shoe from all the wear and tear, but kept using it because my bank account was going nowhere but down slowly, which meant I had to refrain myself from spending on anything; it also meant a whole lot of wet-squishy-sponge-like socks during the rainy seasons.

But anyways, between me and that lady, it felt like we were on complete ends of the spectrum that happened to be in the same room that day.

I know it sounds cliche but it made me realize that money isn’t everything, instead the perfect balance of your health is.

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With that being said, just the thought of working five days a week seems like slavery to me. It doesn’t make sense anymore how one can tax their body with that kind of schedule or lifestyle, especially if they’re single and have to do everything themselves without any type of support.

I’ve had the chance to work a four-day and three-day per week job for the first time in my life not too long ago and the health benefits were almost life changing in a way. It felt like taking a ‘staycation’ or holiday every single week.

I mean, just for clarification, I’m not trying to promote anti-work, I’m not saying we should work fewer hours and have more days to ourselves (though that would be ideal). I’m trying to be reasonable here. Businesses have to function one way or another at the end of the day.

What I’m trying to say is that condensing a five-day work week into three or four days to work longer hours is possible and the better alternative.

So why not? Knowing that you’ll receive a long weekend or an extra long weekend every week should be enough to sustain that happiness meter as compared to now, right? Maybe I’m wrong here, but work-life balance is extremely important.

Imagine having a nice income to get by comfortably in life, where if you knew that money isn’t going to be an issue for the months and years ahead, your outlook on life would drastically improve since you know you’ve got plenty of it and it’s one less thing to stress about.

The same could be said about the number of days you work per week or have off.

If you knew you had more days off, things will be better for your mind and body in order to rejuvenate.

People just have a miraculous way of cleansing out the bad stuff when there’s a surplus.

Just ask this Chick-fil-A owner, who implemented a 14-hour, three-day work week, for which hundreds of applicants applied for. It’s a win-win situation, especially for employees.

Time flies so fast that two days of downtime actually feels like only one.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

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Let’s say a person named Bob, who works in a warehouse factory, a pretty physical job from 9-5 Mondays-Fridays.

“Finally!”, says Bob. It’s Friday and he can’t wait until the weekend kicks off. Bob is a little fatigued, the clock strikes 5, he punches out. Enjoy your two days off Bob, you deserve it.

Something is wrong with this picture…

Five days of work, blue-collar type of work, then having only two days off to decompress, recover, and enjoy yourself just isn’t enough.

His first day off on Saturday will probably be reserved for errands and tasks like grocery shopping, chores around the house, pet care, family priorities, maybe fixing unexpected issues, etc etc, where he’ll probably get a certain amount of time left at the end of the day to enjoy himself unless he pulls an all nighter.

So the only time Bob can genuinely relish his time off away from work is on a Sunday.

One day.

Let me repeat that, one day!

One day to do whatever he pleases without worrying about anything else, the must-do tasks.

But wait!

Let’s add fuel to the fire and assume Bob usually goes to sleep at 10pm and wakes up at 7am, this means he’ll only have 15 hours of true freedom on Sunday.

This isn’t accounting for whether or not Bob likes to sleep in on his days off, so that 15 hours can be reduced even further to your liking.

Simply put, it’s just not a whole lot of time to enjoy yourself or life.

Now let’s look at it from a grand scheme of things and multiply this into the thousands, if not millions of other working individuals around the world like Bob.

Perhaps, Amanda, another fictitious example but isn’t far-fetched from reality, who works in retail at Walmart and has somewhat of a similar schedule to Bob except her work is arguably more tiring and stressful because she has to deal with fussy customers.

Oh and don’t forget about Jonathan, who probably has it worse being in construction means working in a hazardous environment.

Multiply this again because white-collar workers haven’t been mentioned yet…

You can start to piece together why society may be more tense and negative than it ought to be, perhaps more violent due to the built-up anger and emotions from the quality of life that needs to be ventilated.

Shorter work weeks have to be the norm.

It’s crazy to think how a five-day work week was officially adopted by Ford Motors in 1926, nearly a century ago and still remains as the standard today.

I think it’s time for a drastic change around the world, or at least in first world countries, wouldn’t you agree?