First off I agree with all of the sentiment work life balance is out of whack you should have half of the time off half of the time working this would be a fair balance and realistically it should be affordable for all people to do just this. You need 8 hours of sleep to be healthy so this is gone… They expect you to work 8 hours a day normal full shift. What is left is 8 hours.
Or is it? Lets dive deeper!
However they expect an unpaid lunch so you are stuck there 8 hours and 30 minutes then you have about 30 minutes of getting ready for work then you have commute time. for a typical work day 8 hours you are expected to essentially donate 2 hours of your time. Either being at work commuting to work or being there early. So you start off with a deficit on the work days so now you have 10 hours tied up in work really for an 8 hour day. So the balance is off daily.
Non work time = 6 hours
Now to speak to the work week you work 5 out of the 7 days of the week.
Days working and days off being equal you should only have to work 3.5 days realistically speaking for true equal treatment. Work/Life balance that is it the rest is just BULL$HIT
If there were “WORK LIFE BALANCE” or if anyone cared about it it would be 50/50 you can talk whatever you want to talk but no matter what is on one side it has to be on the other side that is balance there is no scale where you can put 5lbs on one side and 7lbs on the other and have it balance and if it does there is a trick or something is broken. Same goes for work life balance.
So how could we fix it we could clean it up by allowing employees to be paid for lunch giving them 30 minutes back of their day so they are only at work a true 8 hours vs 8 and 1/2 Allow tardy forgiveness within 5 minutes. So that people are not forced to be there 15 minutes early everyday in the event a train comes or they get stuck behind a funeral precession or heaven forbid a Sunday driver or a retired person who probably should NOT be operating an automobile because they are likely more dangerous than a drunk driver.
Make mandatory overtime illegal because last I checked if we are at will we should not be forced to work more than our scheduled shift with the exception of Emergency Services and Healthcare and a few other things you not getting overtime out of an employee is a matter of agreement of terms. Allow companies to offer overtime in exchange for time off instead of time and a half. This would give employees way more power to exercise there rights to refuse overtime exchange time off for overtime or name their price for overtime. Heck you want me to work 1 hour of overtime give me two hours off unpaid to use when I need it. This is where we can reclaim some of the unequal activity.
If the great resignation did not teach you that going along with everything was not the best way forward I don't know what will you have power by yourself to change things and make changes. Always save 6 months of cash to ensure you maintain that power. Never forget you are not forced to be where you are it is actually better to change where you are as frequently as possible the more people that do so the merrier. But I like my job right I hear this all the time err well discomfort is the new norm if you want to stay comfortable I'm afraid you will not find it in doing the same thing over and over that makes you uncomfortable. But lets say you just don't want to leave well these are the facts:
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My way and how I've dealt with it is as follows:
Only way I know how to do it is to dig deep when your burnt out keep going cheat yourself on sleep. There are only so many hours in a day if you need more time sleep less and be more productive when your tired by pushing yourself to be and in time it becomes a new normal there are still periods when you just can't what I like to call “real burnout” vs “patterned burnout” real burnout happens beyond the pattern burnout. Just like anything if you make burnout a routine it becomes one. The math is simple you only have so many hours you can only expand them by sleeping less or finding ways to be more productive with your time and automate as much as you can.
I actually did the math I could regain about 5-8 minutes a day by installing motion lights in hallways and pantries. Don't seem like much but add it up 5×365 = 30 hours 42 minutes per year. It takes 20 hours to become half assed proficient in something new or there about. So this alone allows me to become more proficient in something each year that I wasn't as proficient in. There are other hacks like this to cut corners.
Things like slow cookers are a godsend when you wake up place your meal in them when you get home dinner is served. I just saved about 30minutes on cooking to an hour depending. you do that twice a week that is 1 hour a week you can reclaim. For something else. You got to look at things simply because it is a real question with real answers. There are things a person can do to save time but will you utilize the saved time productively?
I have also specified to employers that I do not work mandatory overtime in my interviews. I explain that I have way too much going on in my life as it is to come here for 40 hours a week and have that not be enough but at the same time I don't miss work unless someone dies or my car breaks down or I'm forced to stay home from COVID, injury or otherwise. I mean my entire working life I have not once made a call in and lied simply cause I did not feel like working. If I was genuinely sick throwing up, crapping terribly I would call in if my car didn't start or got stuck in the snow or ditched a car or was in an accident I called in! If I was hung over guess what my fault. If I didn't feel like working well tough crap I got to work if I was injured or in so much back pain I couldn't take it well I called in. But I have never once lied to get a day off. There is something in being earnest that allows you not to take bull$hit because there is no guilt for what you do you maintain yourself as a person of your word.
Always remember no matter what another thinks your life and your well being are no less important than theirs your value will always be subjective someone out there is always willing to pay you more just based off of who you are right in this moment. This was supposed to be a comment but it turned into a TL:DR Posting 😛
Enjoy folks some of what you want to hear and some of what you don't want to hear I'm sure for some but knowing is half the battle.