Try reversing things to get the proper life-work balance

Interested in more work-life content? Check out our weekly Careers newsletter. Sent every Sunday afternoon.
When we first look for a job as an adolescent and even as we age, our intention is to work so we can earn money in order to have a good life. Entrepreneur Tim Duggan thinks that’s wrong-headed. Instead, we should decide what life we want, then figure out how much money that will take, and finally we should seek employment that allows us to secure that level of money and desired life.
He calls this alternative approach working backwards.
Starting with life means addressing our work-life balance. Here again, he argues we need to reverse our thinking – and wording – calling it life-work balance, thus stressing life is the most important part. And we need to divide life into three component parts: Relationships, mind and body. A healthy life depends on spending time with other people, like family and friends. We need to keep ourselves busy, engaged, fulfilled, happy and mentally fit, be it playing cards, reading books or watching documentaries to learn more about things that interest us. Finally, we need to enjoy health, nutrition and exercise – keeping our body in good shape.
That gives us four elements of concern: Work, relationships, mind and body. “By focusing on just four core elements of how we can spend our time, we are cutting out the noise and committing quality time to what matters. Of those four elements, most of us have focused too much on the first element, work, often to the detriment of the others. This has led to an overworked, disengaged and apprehensive workforce,” he writes in Work Backwards.
A study that compared the ideal day for working women to their actual day found they should be spending a little less time with friends, a lot more time with relatives, and a lot less time with the boss. The average worker around the world puts in 43.9 hours a week. With 112 hours of waking time a week, assuming eight hours sleep, and work one of four elements we are balancing in our lives, he argues we should be aiming to spend a quarter of those hours at work, or 28. That seems low for most of us, but in fact it’s roughly what an increasing number of organizations are committing to with the four-day week – indeed, after breaks, a 32-hour, four-day week is 28 hours of work. And that should be accompanied, he says, by 28 hours each for relationships, mental health and physical health.
There are seasons to our life when those numbers may change. And many of the activities he is separating into buckets can be combined – jogging with your best friend, for example – but to work backwards you need to start with your end goal and numerically the 28-hour breakdown should be considered. You also want a life – including work – which has meaning, and fits what he calls your anchor values, so it’s important to think through that part of your life map, knowing what you are seeking.
Addressing the money part in his approach requires learning how much possessions, success and money you need to be happy. What’s enough? He suggests bottom-up budgeting, listing how much you need to spend each month on every aspect of your life. “The key here is that when you know how much money you need, you can then empower yourself by deciding how much work you have to do to achieve this,” he writes.
Work is becoming more flexible and he recommends exploring various options to fit with the life you want to live, including remote work, four-day weeks and career breaks. Artificial intelligence and better meetings might whittle down the number of hours working.
He also highlights the importance of job crafting, taking the job you have and contouring it so you spend more time on tasks and interpersonal relationships that provide meaning and joy. This is often within your control, at least somewhat. Also, rethink your role to keep prominent in your mind the service to others and your values the job offers.
The way we are working is broken, he insists, and we need to fix it. Try working backwards.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.