Professional life vs personal life

Throughout my entire career, I have heard that professional life and personal life have to be separated, and in a general way, it’s true that we need to be careful of not focusing too much on work, of not forgetting our families, our health, ourselves, but, is it true that personal life and professional life have to be two independent aspects in our lives?

I remember my first job after I finished university, it was with a small IT company and it was a good beginning. I had the opportunity to work on different projects for different customers, which gave me the opportunity to learn different technologies and business rules. I also had the opportunity to play different roles, like lead instructor, project lead, analyst, and obviously, developer. I also performed a little bit of QA testing as part of project lead. All of this allowed me to quickly grow my career, but there was a big, yet small problem. I spent more time at the office than at home, and the same happened in the next 5 years, I had prioritized the work over my health, I even thought that I had chosen the wrong career. I moved to another company where they also pretended that I had to work during whole day. I started to think that Software Development was a profession for people without any other things to do, only working from dawn to dusk. I thought that, until I started to work in a company where they treated people well, even the HR area was called differently; it was “People”, because for them, human resources are more that resources, they are people with a life outside of the work, people with their own concerns and more commitments to attend. I worked in that company for a while, a little more than a year, then I moved to another one, because the only thing I didn’t like was that there were a few opportunities for more projects, the company just been established in Mexico and there weren’t enough projects, I started to feel stuck in my career, so I searched for a company with new challenges.

I found another one, and the challenge was big, although I had a boss that was a little intense, I liked my work, unfortunately the project was completed and I had to look for other opportunities.

Up to this moment, I had realized that it was possible to enjoy my career, although I still dealt with bosses trying to take advantage of me, I had learnt that I could establish my own limits, I didn’t let my boss make impossible demands or requirements of working too much time.

Now I work in a company where one of the most important things is the people’s wellbeing, of course completing goals is important, but never over people, project plans have to be realistic and achievable, this generates a good environment, a balance between work and life. That is precisely the point: balance.

For a long time I also thought that work and life had to be separated, and is true that is important we must be careful of those two things, if we dedicate too much time to working, we are liable to disregard our personal things, but at the same time, we cannot be too relaxed and neglect our work, however it’s impossible thinking that we have to separate both things, work and personal things, why? For the simple fact that we cannot split ourselves into two people, one that works and one that attends to personal items.

What to do then?

Balance: and probably many of you will think “but Alex, when we say that you have to separate work and personal life is the same thing”, not exactly, probably the goal is the same, however when we see both things as two separated entities, we have an inside dilemma of prioritizing one thing over the other one, taking us to more dilemmas like, if you are wrong, if one day you work more or simply not work in absolute.

The truth is that work and personal activities are vital for our life, we cannot go without any of them, they are strongly linked, we can even say that they depend on each other, thinking on separating them is similar to pretending to split ourselves to attend to each of them, of course this is not possible, each one of us is only one person.

Enjoy your work

There is a saying that says something like “find work that you like and you will never have to work”, of course it’s rhetoric, but there is a sad fact that there are a lot of people who don’t like their work, they see it as a disgusting and a clumsy thing but necessary, they do it because they must, because if we don’t work we cannot simply earn money to get food, to pay a house/rental, to buy car, to pay for school, etc., basically to fund our lives, so, working is something that we cannot avoid, even if the world didn’t run on money, we still would need to work, for that reason it is important to enjoy our work, when you enjoy your work your perception changes drastically, you will see your worth as part of you, you’ll take care of it.

I am conscious to achieve such a fact, there are many things that have to change to ensure establishing worthy work conditions and achieve that people are happy with their work, it’s important that governments, companies and society work together.

Get organized

Assuming you already work in something you love, you are in that dream job, it’s important to establish a schedule and follow it to the letter, a time to work, a time to take a breath, a time to finish.

When you have the possibility of working remotely or in the case you have your own business, it’s important to avoid working extra time if it’s not needed, and sometimes it’s fine, that ease is useful, but you have to be careful, you can easily to fall in a cycle where you work any time, putting aside the rest of your life, it’s important in the times your have scheduled, (the times you have scheduled are important) , if you didn’t finish, you can continue the next day.

Special place to work

If you work in an office, there’s no problem, but if that’s not the case, it’s important having a special place for your work, of course it depends on different conditions, especially economic resources, but as far as possible, a specific place for your work is suitable, avoid working in your bedroom or dining room, probably a small studio or adapt a table with a chair in your living room if your house doesn’t have enough space, but don’t worry if your place to work is very small, the idea is to have a place exclusively to work, it is not for other things and the same with the rest of your house, no working over your bed.

Again, of course it depends on different conditions, probably you need money to have a special place to work, but as soon you have it, you must do it.

These are some of the things I consider are essential to a proper work environment and avoiding the idea of work and life as two separated things is perhaps the most important. What do you think?