The-Accountant-Sep-Oct-2017-Final

Work Place
IS YOUR WORK
LIFE BALANCED?
By Beatrice Njoroge
Today’s professionals are faced with
increased pressure for quick career
progression and drive to grow up
the career ladder. I would not be
mistaken to think that you have
calculated your professional path, probably
you already have thought of a future title be it
in the corporate sphere or as an entrepreneur.
For us to reach where we would want to
be in the next few years, we increasingly find
ourselves having to put in long work hours
to minimize the work load while optimizing
on available opportunities. We find ourselves
striving to be identified as top performers
which will usually influence the money we
end up with or increasing our probability of
nailing the next bigger and better job. We
find ourselves jumping from one meeting to
another. It is said that we must make time to
‘network’ for us to speedily navigate upwards.
We probably decide to advance our education
by adding yet another education certificate,
and so on and so forth. I hope you get the
picture; there is so much we need to do in
relation to our ‘work’ yet the echo is louder
that we need to have a ‘life. There is little or
no time left for our family members, friends
and other social relationships. You may find
yourself dwindling when it comes to your
spiritual wellbeing, no time to eat healthy
food, little time to exercise or generally take
care of your health and probably you do not
contribute to the community as often as you
would want to.
With all this, is it possible to have a work
life balance and if so how can we juggle so
many balls up the air? I agree with the notion
that it is impossible to have a work life balance
because it is impossible to separate work and
life. The notion of work life balance suggests
that one opposes the other, that there is some
sort of competition between work and life.
I envision that probably work life balance
would have been possible some 2 or 3 decades
32 september - october 2017