Work-Life Blend: how to live, work and love without being torn apart

What kind of work-life balance can you talk about when you need to close your mortgage, submit a report by tomorrow evening, cook dinner for four people and still have time to go to the gym and take foreign language courses? In such conditions, work-life balance is a magical and unattainable fairy tale ... Another thing is work-life blend! This is a new alternative to the notorious "balance", a concept that allows you to look at life soberly and not separate work and personal interests, but to intertwine them so that you no longer have to suffer.

What is a Work-Life Blend: when "Need" and "Want" dance together

Quite simply, work-life blend is not about a clear division of time into "work" and "rest". It's about the mutual integration of these areas, about the ability to find harmony between what brings money and what brings you pleasure. This is about how to make sure that work is not an everyday ordeal that you have to go through with gritted teeth, and at the same time you have more time for your personal life than two hours on a Sunday evening.

Let's make it clear. Imagine a marketer who runs a company's Instagram account, traveling the world and taking stunning photos in unusual locations with the brand's products. Or a programmer who remotely tests new mobile apps and video games that he has been playing since the age of sixteen. This is the work-life blend in action - when work becomes an extension of personal interests, and personal interests help in work. And it's not about loving your job at all, but about finding common ground between "personal" and "work" and developing flexibility.

Thus, the differences between work-life blend and work-life balance become obvious. Unlike its new counterpart, work-life balance presents work and personal life as two opposites that inevitably compete with each other for your attention and internal resources. And if it could have been put into practice ten years ago, today, when everyone has smartphones and the ability to work remotely, work-life balance is already outdated. In the information age, we simply cannot physically completely isolate ourselves from office life, even if we try, which means that work will always be with us. What to do? To make it so that you don't even want to separate from it!

Suitable for:

• Freelancers and remote workers who are not tied to an office and a specific schedule, so they can be "yanked" at almost any moment and, most importantly, meet the deadline rather than be online at certain hours.

• Creative professionals whose work is tied to travel, travel, exhibitions, social events, or the generation of such content that needs to be filmed/edited live

• People at risk of emotional burnout or mental disorders (for example, anxiety disorder), when it is difficult to focus on tasks clearly at certain hours or when the psychological state is aggravated by routine.

Accordingly, the work-life blend cannot be implemented if you work in large (especially government) structures where accountability, a clear nine-to-six schedule and office hours are important. For everyone else, work-life blend offers a lot of advantages, for example, increased motivation. As already mentioned, you don't have to quit your current job and look for something that you truly love, because the point is not to love what you do, but to "do" it without annoying or unnerving you.

So, in the case of a successfully implemented work-life blend, stress levels decrease and your performance increases. In addition, relationships with your loved ones improve, because you begin to devote more time to them, not at the expense of work, but in parallel with it, so that none of the spheres of life "eats up" the other. Of course, to implement work-life blend into your life, you will need to develop flexibility, and this in itself is another advantage - new skills that will be useful to you for building a career, among other things. And now let's get down to practice!

How to live according to Work-Life Blend: we are following the path of harmony

Keep in mind that work-life blend is not a magic pill that instantly eliminates all problems. Rather, it is a painstaking work on oneself that requires awareness, planning and readiness for change. But the result is worth it! So, let's take a look at the basics of how to bring this tempting concept to life.

Determine your overall priorities for the current period of your life

This point is the foundation of the entire work-life blend building. Before you sail somewhere, you need to understand where your reference point is. Be honest with yourself. Perhaps you will realize that career growth is not the most important thing for you personally, it is more important for you to spend time with your family or help other people. Or, on the contrary, you realize that without professional achievements your life seems empty and meaningless. It is important to understand your true needs and desires, so that you can have "reference points" on which you will build your daily activities and work schedule directly. Also keep in mind that what was important to you a year ago may no longer be relevant today. It is important to review priorities periodically!

How to set priorities - here are a few techniques for you:

• The technique of "Atomic Habits". Instead of global goals like "becoming successful," focus on small, concrete steps. "Devoting 15 minutes a day to reading professional literature" is a more achievable and measurable goal.

• The Eisenhower method. Divide all tasks into 4 categories: important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and not important and not urgent. The first two should be put to work immediately, the third ones should be delegated, and the last ones should be left for "sometime later."

• Ask yourself, "What will I stop doing?It's much easier to remove something superfluous from your life than to add something new. Analyze what your time is spent on, and ruthlessly get rid of useless activities.

Create a new schedule and precisely "combine" work and personal life.

First, define a list of activities and tasks in which you can afford some flexibility, for example, what you can do for work while in a cafe, in a car, on a plane or directly at a festival. If you are a freelancer or a remote worker, there are definitely such activities: for example, you can take new photos for a blog just at an event or write an article while waiting for your flight at the airport.

Then, based on this and taking into account the priorities identified earlier, make up a new schedule: where and when you work from home, which part of the work can be turned into leisure (this, of course, should be the part that brings you pleasure), where you can go directly with your family and children for work tasks (why not should I take them with me to a shoot or an exhibition where you will present new products?), etc. Try to start not only from what you need to do, but also from how to do it so that you get at least some pleasure. The most primitive example: if you need to write a boring report, and you usually do it in your home office, then go to the park and do it there, and before and after at the same time exercise or walk the dog. Combine personal interests and even household chores with work.

Set some boundaries

"Some", because we are trying to live with you by "blend", not "balance", which means we don't need super-hard boundaries in large numbers. Still, some are necessary, because otherwise your life will turn into chaos. Determine for yourself 2-3 places and time periods in which you will not be allowed to work. This should definitely be your bed (otherwise the risk of insomnia increases, the brain will begin to confuse the workplace with the sleeping place), for example, after 19:00. It can also be in the morning before 9 a.m. while you are having breakfast (you should not combine work with meals at all), etc. You can set the same boundaries with work, for example, that you stay at home or in the office one day a week and work two hours in a standard way to maintain your concentration. Ideally, you should have two places: one should be associated exclusively with work, and the other exclusively with leisure. In all other places, activities can be mixed.

Use smart technology

Modern technologies can make life much easier and help combine business with pleasure. For example, Forest is an application that turns work into a game! It plants a virtual tree that grows while you're not using your phone, stimulating concentration. The Freedom app will block distracting websites and restrict the use of social media for the time you want to devote only to work.Calm and Headspace will help you relax and meditate between tasks, while fitness trackers like Fitbit or sleep tracking apps like Sleep Cycle will help you take care of your physical health. Also use cloud and other work services, for example, which automate part of the process and thereby free you from routine tasks.

Learn to recover in the process.

Find ways to relax and relieve stress that you enjoy: reading books, listening to music, meditation, yoga, nature walks. By the way, this is another area that should be distinguished from work. Find something that makes you immerse yourself in the process (say, the very reading) and turn off your phone for those 2-3 free hours. You need a source that will belong only to you as a person, and that will not be related to your work, or even household chores and responsibilities. Let's call it an "outlet". Set aside a separate time for him in your schedule and outside of the work-life blend concept.

Also, keep in mind the simple ways of self-healing throughout the day that you can practice no matter where you are or what you are doing. For example, sensory relaxation, when you put on a dark blindfold for five minutes a day, lie down and listen to the sounds of nature or white noise, thereby relaxing the channels of perception.

Be sure to seek support at the beginning of your work-life blend journey! Subscribe to thematic groups and communities where you can share tips with like-minded people, and eventually talk to your superiors and discuss the possibility of giving you more flexibility if your current level of flexibility is not enough for you to implement this concept in your life. Work-life blend is in many ways an intuitive strategy that is implemented through trial and error, so don't be afraid to experiment. The main thing is to start from the idea that you need to mix harmoniously and have fun, not separate and only either work or relax. You can do both at the same time - that's the whole point!