Balancing your life and job becomes a matter of choices

The Baltimore Sun

Do most of us have the notion of work-life balance wrong? Is it possible to get ahead in our careers without literally working around the clock?

The answers are never clear cut. But I'm asking these impossible questions because of an item I recently read on The Wall Street Journal blog called The Juggle that deals with the issues of life and work.

The blog cited New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's commencement speech to graduates of City University of New York's College of Staten Island.

Here's what he said about work ethics (you can hear the mayor's speech for yourself on YouTube): "If you're the first one in the morning and the last one to leave at night and you take fewer vacation days and never take a sick day, you will do better than the people who don't do that," he told the graduates. "It's very simple."

Bloomberg mentioned his father, who "worked seven days a week for his entire life until he checked himself into a hospital to die."

Bloomberg, of course, is no slacker.

He worked on Wall Street and climbed the ranks of then-investment bank Salomon Brothers. After being squeezed out of Salomon after a merger, according to his official biography, Bloomberg began a company called Bloomberg LP in 1981, which eventually earned him billions.

He was elected as New York City mayor in 2001 and was re-elected four years later.

My translation of his advice: Work longer hours and rarely take a break, leaving little time for a life.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in hard work and proving myself as other workers do, too. But Bloomberg's advice seems so old-school, so counter to what I hear from my friends and colleagues -- young and old -- and read in surveys on what workers want that inundate my inbox every day.

Undergraduates said balancing personal life and career is the No. 1 professional goal they would like to attain within three years of graduation, according to a survey of 44,064 undergraduate students from 184 schools conducted by Universum.

Other surveys have found similar results, especially among younger workers, many of whom grew up with their workaholic parents.

"At the end of the day, you can't have everything," says Susan D. Strayer, a former Johns Hopkins University career adviser and author of The Right Job Right Now. "If you're in the office seven days a week, ... you're sacrificing other parts of your life. You could absolutely do that. But at what cost?"

"It's all about life choices," she adds.

Besides the obvious of an eventual burnout by working longer and taking few days off, there's the question of one's happiness. Maybe that's overrated?

I really want to know what you think.

Send your stories, tips and questions to working@baltsun. com. Please include your first name and your city. On the Job is published Monday at www.baltimoresun.com.

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