When Work-Life Balance Means Working on the Weekends
- The Lively Beans Philippines
- Apr 17, 2021
- 5 min read
April 17, 2021 8:08PM
The idea of a 4-day work week sure sounds awesome, but why does it feel like working 7 days weekly is more energizing?
Photo owned by The Lively Beans
Before you think this is another post hailing the hustle culture, let us share with you that we come from a place of a never-ending battle against procrastination, unproductive yet sleepless nights, and "afternoon" mornings (is there a word for waking up at 12pm besides "late" which is somewhat an understatement?).
It has been established that even if we do the things we love most - with the people we love, admire, and respect the most- there will always be days when we are so unproductive, and would just want to escape from all the responsibilities or at least leave for some time and get back when all the anxiety has creeped out of our system.
To try to avoid such days, we create habits that boost our productivity such as creating to-do lists, scheduling, tidying up our workspace, and decluttering our digital space. We've also learned that productivity needs a holistic approach, and so we also try to put ourselves together from the inside and establish habits such as exercising, eating healthy, sleeping well, meditating, journaling, and connecting with people and nature more.
All of this can be classified under the "self-care" umbrella, and many people have sworn by it. Even us.
For most days or weeks these really do work. And then...a random day - neither eventful nor uneventful - comes by, and we feel we're slowly going back to a rut again.
No matter how "balanced" we try to be, we just can't avoid having to deal with short periods of anxiety or laziness or just overall mind clutter. It just is a consequence of weariness, which is one result of having done something serious, big, or important - or even just plainly having DONE something. It is normal, yet we think it's problematic. And maybe that's what we've been wrong about.
Our idea of a "balanced" life is having the ability and capacity to: (1) spend ample time with loved ones and never miss important occasions; (2) do a job that fulfills us mentally, emotionally, financially, and socially; (3) have time for leisure, self-reflection, and entertainment.
It's nothing new and it's pretty generic. It's also nothing new that we also try to achieve the balance on a daily or weekly basis because we've been convinced that consistency is key to every good habit, and the more we're reminded of the important things, the more we'll get better at accomplishing them.
But did anyone else sometimes feel this is more self-sabotaging? Of course there are days when one facet is busier and demands more of our time and energy than the others. It's common sense to of course prioritize accordingly.
You have a big project this month? Sure, it's okay to miss some lunch outs with friends. You skipped your daily journaling because you have a deadline to meet? Totally understandable, duh.
But why is that every time we do, we FEEL GUILTY? We feel we're not balanced. We feel that we're failing in our promise to ourselves that we're going to get better at each of the aspects of our lives.
Our daily necessities: journal / planner and coffee.
Photos owned by The Lively Beans
One self promise we've been trying to keep is that as corporate employees, our weekends and holidays will be dedicated solely for non-corporate work related activities. After all, we spend most of our days without having control of our own time, since our employers own it, legally.
Working on the weekends must signal that either we're onto something huge and so important, or we're catching up on backlogs - and both are giving some amount of stress to us.
These have always been the idea but lately, we felt that working on the weekends TOO somehow gives us more positive, productive energy, versus when we're trying to finish it all on a weekday.
It's not that we particularly enjoy the grind, and being constantly subject to stress. We're not taking pride in feeling "important" in our organizations either.
It is counterintuitive, but if we are to take a stab at figuring out why this feels this way, maybe it's because we have tried too much to define productivity.
We know we felt compelled to do so because our modern realities have been requiring us to create outputs to live, but productivity is more than a concept. It is a state of being. We may not put it in the same category as happiness or being in love, but it is also a state that affects our minds, bodies, and emotions. And, it also affects the way we see the world.
We've been trying to explain productivity as if it's an exact science. Sure, there has been numerous research linking self-care and Type A habits to the quantity and quality of people's outputs.
But what if the best way to deal with productivity is not to try to define it, but just try to express it?
Let's start with this: work has been so crazy the past couple of weeks that we have skipped all our daily routines (morning routine, reading a book, decluttering, and most importantly, journaling).
Were we productive? Hell yes! We just finished a HUGE project that helped thousands of people, and it's going to be part of our country's history!
Did we feel productive? Actually, in the personal sense, no. Journaling is a powerful meditative activity for us but with all the busy-ness, we haven't written a single word for the past two weeks.
Why does it matter? Because we have just accomplished something huge - and we mean we have just gone through major ups and downs in our career - yet, we never had time to absorb them to reflect and fully understand every situation. We never had time and energy to just be in the moment...
We just felt exhausted and excited - and a little bit of other stuff such as scared, annoyed, fulfilled, joyful, strong, driven, passionate, messy, regretful...and a lot more.
Maybe "feeling productive" is a little bit of all sorts of things. Because no matter how many or few, or how big or small, we achieve, productivity is largely about our own sense of accomplishment.
It has been a crazy period at work, and technically we're imbalanced because we've only been "working" working and almost neglecting everything else. But doing more work this weekend, even if the project was done, and going against our initial definitions of a "balanced" life, actually allows us to take back the power over what we perceive is productive or not.
After all, maybe we don't always need to be writing our hearts and minds out to feel that we're taking time for self-care. Just being in the moment and doing what feels right at this point in time - which, in this case, getting into a group call again to work more - is already all that we need to be and feel productive.
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