Balance vs Job
In response to an article written on LinkedIn I’d written the following, only to find out my brief comment on the subject was apparently too long {SMILE}:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/americans-have-a-vacation-problem-4696492/
Vacation
This is just a word.
In this life what we need is balance. Everything in nature and in life has its place and its rhythm: the cycles of sun and moon, the tides, the seasons, as well as our own circadian rhythm. The only difference is that each rhythm has its own wavelength.
In like manner, every person has a time of day and duration within which productivity is optimal. Someone may be OK to hack on a problem or work on a writing assignment or business analysis for a couple of hours after which the mind just gets either tired or even frustrated. It’s time to take a breather, go take a walk or get s.th. to eat or hang out with some colleagues. Gosh at Inktomi we even had video games and pool and ping-pong tables to help with that. If you live near the beach or better yet, work for yourself, you can also take time out to go snorkel, surf, hike, run or bike … Sure you can go jogging during your lunch hour whilst at the office but running in the concrete jungle, or worse, on a treadmill, isn’t the same experience.
Now after doing this routine (.. and routine can become rather mind-numbing, sooner for some than for others …), day after day after day, week after week … there comes a time when a person requires a longer cycle of breaking away. We really need a change of scenery, schedule, climate, people, activities, … and recharge our inner being.
Furthermore, there is yet a much larger point to make: life is more than the job or career, merely a part of the wheel that makes up the whole, serving their purpose. Overall we require meditation, exercise, proper nutrition, socializing, sleep — I’m not aiming to be scientific here but to convey a conceptual principle based on experience.
In short, the job is part of one’s life, it should not ever take over to become one’s life. Once the corporate milieu is allowed to take over, a person gets to be completely out of balance, only to soon wonder where all the resulting stress, aggravation and deteriorating health came from? To make it worse, after 20 or 30 years of this all of a sudden you wonder where you LIFE went!? Even if work was something you loved, too much of one thing is still not healthy.
The question in the end is:
What Matters Most?