Work-Life Ratio

There is rising concern on the importance of mental health in modern life and a big part of that is our so called work-life balance. There are, of course, many factors that affect our mental health but the time we spend at work vs the time we spend for ourselves (whether that's relaxing or doing chores that benefit us like shopping or washing our clothes) is very important.

It is easy to look at paintings and hear stories from old times (like ancient Rome) and imagine that people spent the majority of their time doing what they wanted, like engaging in theatre, writing books or singing songs, and it seems that today very few of us have that luxury. Upon imaging such a life one can start to feel that they don't get enough time to themselves because of our modern society. It is easy to take for granted the fresh water in our taps, functioning sewer systems and relative peace, amongst other conviniences, but I'm not looking to talk about that today.

Instead I want to look at work-life balance in different way to try and improve my outlook and perhaps help you improve yours too.

Try to look at the work-life balance as a ratio rather than a mystical balance where you don't know how much anything weighs. In clear terms this is looking at a typical week: Monday through to Friday as work and the weekend is life (chores as well as leisure time). What we have here is a 5:2 of work to life or (71% vs 29% for those that prefer percentages). A large part of this is making the rough assumption that you do nothing except for working during the week which is likely not true but given the stress (physical or mental) of many jobs, those afterwork hours are used just to unwind and getting ready for the day anyway.

These numbers appear quite shocking as they tell us we work for 2.5x more than we live in a typical week.

But what if we want to change that and you can afford to work 1 day less if we make some sacrifices?

If you are willing and fortunate enough to be able to cut your work week down to 4 days, whilst still being able to afforf to live, then the shift in your work-life ratio is huge. By having 4 days at work and 3 days for life then the ratio becomes 4:3 or 57% to 43%.

The differences in these numbers may be difficult to grasp so lets scale up the ratios to be more directly comparable.

- a 5 day work week is: 5/2 or 15/6

- a 4 day work week is: 4/3 or 8/6

Let's take the latter 2 ratios and compare and things become a lot clearer: 15/6 vs 8/6. In the 4 day week you are working almost half as much for your leisure time as the 5 day work week for just 1 day less of working. Alternatively, you can look at it as working 1 day less and getting almost twice as much leisure time. Isn't that crazy?!

Obviously there are other factors that make this model a big of a broad stroke such as reduced employment opportunities / promotions but if it's a possibility for you then it is really worth considering.