It's Not work/life balance anymore; it's simply profersonal

Last year, I wrote a post about operating in a “profersonal” world. (Thank you, Willy Franzen.)

I have used this term now every single day, multiple times a day, for the past three weeks.

I started using this word because social media has finally nailed shut the coffin on this myth people like to believe that somehow our worlds can be divided into “professional” and “personal.” They can’t. They never really could, but communications across the two realms was inefficient enough that we could pretend that they were actually different things. Sure, friends got us jobs, and coworkers turned into spouses, and family businesses were everywhere, but we treated these fact as the exceptions to the mythical rules.

Today, forget it. It’s not like you talk to your family at home; your coworkers at the water cooler; your clients at meetings; peers at conferences; friends at the bar; and recruiters at secret lunch meetings anymore. Today, however you meet them, the people you interact with all follow up with you via the same few channels: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.

Your worlds have collided. Work/life balance is dead.

Much of what I’m doing through Ajax Social Media is helping companies “win” in the profersonal world by helping their employees over the learning curve that comes with profersonalism. Personal/professional splits and work/life balances may have been myths that drove people to Sisyphean acts of self-defeat, but they were comfortable, and you know us people: we like what’s comfortable, no matter how bad it is for us.

So look, I get it: new things—even obviously good new things—can be scary, let alone new things that come with made up words to describe them. But go ahead.

Take control of your profersonal life.

You’ll be glad you did.

Jason Seiden is CEO of Ajax Workforce Marketing. Ajax amplifies brands by aligning employees' online messaging.