Shedding Some Light on the Blended Life

Published by Ryan Healy on April 5th, 2007 in Work | 2 Comments

First off, I am absolutely amazed at the amount of conversation that my "I Don't Want Work/Life Balance" post on The Brazen Careerist has caused. A lot of comments were positive and many people liked the phrase. Some people disagreed with the "blended" concept, but the majority were supportive, which I truly appreciate.

I'm writing this brief follow-up post because I believe that somewhere along the way; my words were lost in translation. Many recent comments talk about needing to balance work and life in order to keep sane and not become a workaholic. If you read over my post, you will notice that not once do I suggest that I live to work or work around the clock. In fact, I probably don't spend as much time as I could on my work because so much of my day is devoted to blogging and keeping up my website.

Some people assumed that because I discuss incorporating work into my life that I must be a power hungry, success driven human being. What I am really trying to convey with this blended life idea is that work should be a part of my life not a separate entity. Work is no more important then any other aspect of my life. How can I achieve a blended life if I am working around the clock?

One comment that I absolutely loved was from Erik Mazzone, he said, "I think a key part of the approach you wrote about, and it's a smart one in my opinion, is the sense of fluidly moving between work and non work tasks."

This is exactly what I was trying to convey. There is no need to work while you are at you kids soccer game or out at night with friends, but there is no reason you can't transition from work in the morning to the soccer game in the afternoon and back to work at night without worrying whether something is a "work" task or a "life" task. Every day is different, some will be busier than others, but life takes place at all hours of the day, not just after work and on the weekends.

Brad Maier wrote a post on his blog further clarifying my blended life comments. He stresses that multitasking is not blending and that it is perfectly acceptable to make your schedule fit your needs. These are two important concepts in a blended life. If you are constantly multitasking or thinking about work, then in reality you will constantly be working, defeating the entire purpose of a blended life. Moreover, making your schedule fit your needs is not a novel concept like Brad says, but if you want this flexibility then sometimes you have to be prepared to send out a few emails or finish up an important presentation late at night.

If you think that living a blended life means you are constantly working and stressing out about your job, you are probably still thinking of work and life as a constant tug of war. If you are doing something you love then why can't they be one and the same? The goal of a blended life is not living to work and its not working to live. The goal is to have a life.