With all due respect to the very sharp Josh Bersin and fellow bloggers Laurie Ruettimann, Lance Haun, Sharlyn Lauby, and Kris Dunn, this is ridiculous.
First of all, the term “weisure” is a joke. We’re blending work and leisure? No, we’re not. These two things don’t mix. Ever see those billboards in airports showing smiling people sitting on the beach with their laptops? That’s weisure, and it’s pure fiction. In real life, if I’m on the beach with a laptop:
- I’m grumpy because my computer is getting sand in it.
- I’m annoyed that I can’t relax and enjoy my vacation.
- My head hurts from squinting on account of the glare from the screen.
- My family is upset that I’m not mentally present for them.
- My coworkers are wondering what the hell is wrong with me that I can’t step away from my laptop even when I’m at the beach.
So no, there’s no such thing as “weisure.”
Secondly, all the other terms to describe the same concept, including:
- Work/life balance
- Work/life choices
- Work/life integration
are equally as pathetic.
The problem here is the use of the term LIFE. See, the opposite of LIFE is DEATH; creating a second “opposite” of LIFE and calling it WORK creates a subliminal connection between WORK and DEATH. It’s subtle, it’s profound, and dooms the entire conversation into a bad set of choices.
(Work/life choice? I’ll choose LIFE, thank you.)
The work/life conversation also implies an external source of your problem: if your LIFE’s out of whack, then clearly the root problem is your a-hole boss, who is obviously loading you up on WORK and failing to realize this is your LIFE we’re talking about.
Bring in the integrity
If you like being moderately miserable, then by all means, continue this bullshit conversation. Go ahead. Keep trying to find a balance between LIFE and SOMETHING THAT IS NOT LIFE.
But, if you truly want to succeed, find your balance, and smile that easy, carefree smile you used to have as a child, then let’s start having a more honest conversation.
Repeat after me:
- There is no such thing as work life balance.
- There is no meanie boss harshing on your personal life.
- There is only you and your courage.
The only reason you are “out of balance” is that you are being a puss-ball about something in your life. Ask yourself: are you…
- Failing to dedicate yourself to a single goal, aka, “keeping your options open”?
- Setting backassward priorities, aka putting off that one big decision?
- Holding yourself back, out of fear of… something?
- Allowing others’ priorities (read: your obligations) to crowd out your passions?
You can complain you’re out of balance, but that’s bullshit. The problem is you. You’re not doing what you need to do to succeed. Instead, you’re pussy-footing through life, which is basically the same as asking others to push you around.
Take control of your time. It’s not a question of balance, it’s a question of courage.
Get some.
Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.
I'm the CEO of Ajax Social Media. We're helping 1 million people shine by making their online stories better. 
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My issue with your approach to work-life balance is this: most people, I believe, work for two reasons; 1. to do something productive so as to feel as if they can contribute at some level, and 2. to earn money so that they can live i.e. bowling with the boys and pay the rent. Life is something that requires as much skill as work. It takes effort and energy to plan an excursion to the apple farm to pick apples with the kids. So your point, though well articulated, needs to tell me what it is I am to do. Does that mean I should work with gusto when I work and play with gusto when I play? I can’t mix the two. I can’t have my children come close to sharing my work with me, so what is it that I can do to blur the lines as you say instead of separating them entirely?
@Glenn–literally, the action item here is to stop thinking of the issue in terms of work and life. That’s the big do item–change the language in your head. It’s the simplest, yet most difficult, thing to do. Learn to simply be where you are, without labelling it. Of course, I know you know this, since I learned it from you, Dad.
Let me start with this: I’m in the ballpark with you, if not in the same section.
While I agree that “death” is the opposite of “life” (that ain’t rocket science), I do NOT agree that the term “work” is being used as a “second ‘opposite’ of life”; I think you’re stretching the metaphor a bit there. Unfortunately, “work / ‘everything else in life EXCEPT work’” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. So, someone somewhere decided to shorten it to “work / life”, and the rest of us get the idea. Nitpicking? Maybe. But what you’re proposing is the other way around: “‘something other than life’ / life” being shortened to “work / life”, where we’ve decided to substitute “work” for “something other than life”. Um, probably not.
It seems like right-thinking, to me, when you say that people who struggle with the “balance” are doing it to themselves. But that doesn’t mean there is no such thing as “work / life balance” — just that that person isn’t doing it very well. In fact, I’d argue that “take control of your time” (your words) is just another way of saying “BALANCE the time you spend on WORK and the time you spend on ‘LIFE’” (again, substituting “LIFE” for “everything other than work” — a useful, and agreeable, proposition)
Same, same.
(BTW, I promise to punch anyone I meet who uses the term “weisure”!)
“Take control of your time. It’s not a question of balance, it’s a question of courage.”
Sounds like you are a little mini-God who who wants to make life his little oyster and whip it into your form! Boring, the USA has had that attitude for a long long time and parroting is not what life is about.
How about pick up that sand, let it run through your fingers. Look at the waves move. Look at yourself. Acceptance, affirmation, enjoying what it IS – every aspect of life. There’s your balance.
The ultimate balance is to toss out “good and bad” and love it all.
Did you read my response? I said it was an offensive term. I think it’s stupid. We make our own boundaries. We make our own choices. We should have distance from work or we lose our own personal identities, but don’t cry for me Argentina if you can’t put the blackberry down.
I will say something that I didn’t write in the survey: companies can suck it if they think that we’ll accept 24/7 blackberries when the economy gets better and we get nationalized healthcare. They’ll lose that battle.
@Joseph – Semantics matter. Subtle word changes have a profound impact on the way you think. Pro-life implied pro-abortion–that caused a big shift in the language of the debate.
@RoundSparrow – Amen. What we control is our perception. We take control of our time by taking control of our minds. Buddha would be happy.
@Laurie – I love everything you write, you are a breath of fresh air.
i’m not only in the same ballpark and same section, but i’m sitting on your lap (pardon me, i know it’s quite uncomfortable). the only question i have is “how the hell do you take this position with your people without inciting riots?” i’m a huge fan of HR the “tough-love way”, but i don’t think it goes over very well with the “puss-balls.” maybe we need to start by no longer hiring “puss-balls.”
the other problem = those a-hole leaders who use every opportunity to reference in public how late they were in the office, or the issue they had to deal with over the weekend, etc. stop wearing your timecard as a badge of honor…your not impressing anyone!
I generally object to excessively-cute portmanteaus like “weisure” as a matter of principle. So there’s that.
I’ve been that guy by the beach with a laptop–it can be a little weird traveling on business in a resort area. You can tell who’s who by their choice of footwear. Anyway, in my case, the choice was between being at the beach with a laptop, or being in a cubicle with a laptop. There may have been a drink with an umbrella involved, too. You know what? I’ll take that over the office any day, but I also wouldn’t confuse it with a vacation.
I think that connective technologies like Blackberries, email, etc. are moving us to a more part-time world. In the past, it was difficult if not impossible to effectively coordinate resources unless you brought everyone into a big building for eight hours every day. Part-time work was either focused on a few niche skills or came at a very big income hit versus the same person in the same job on a full-time basis.
Likewise, I have a number of friends who have had their hours and pay reduced proportionally as a cost-cutting measure in the past year. While the income hit hurt at first, a good number have said that once they got used to it, they’re dreading going back to a 5-day work week. Likewise, companies are learning how to integrate part-timers in ways that they haven’t before, and this will stay with them. All of this is pretty new, and I think technology and culture have enabled it.
That being said, I think these changes and flexibilities will also mean that there will be increasing rewards for the type-A’s of the world who keep their bluetooth earpiece in at night and look forward to vacations because it gives them time to work uninterrupted. They will be able to effectively manage and coordinate larger amounts of resources, and that level of immersion will, as always, confer certain benefits. One could argue that this is being seen already with trends in pay in the upper ranks.
To the extent that people are often more concerned with relative rather than absolute status, this could to lead to considerable friction if the part-timers come to feel that they are seen as inferiors. So a lot of this is going to come down to which companies learn how to integrate the two cultures effectively.
Perfect.
@Colin — (1) “Portmanteaus.” Wonderful. (2) I’d take the beach over a cube, too. Because then when I look up, I’m looking at the sea instead of… a cubicle. (3) Type A’s will “win” from a resource standpoint, yes, just like they always have. (4) Type B’s will “win” from a quality of life standpoint, just like *they* always have. (5) There will continue to be enough noise in the system to make it really, really hard to see who’s winning at any given moment.
@Bohdan—You have good taste, my friend.
I don’t disagree with what you’ve said here. I think employers do get a great (short term) benefit from this weisure stuff but in the long run, I don’t think it is a good idea. My point is that good companies should help define boundaries for employees that have serious work issues rather than this work/life balance garbage.
My philosophy is that there is only life and the only choice is how you use it. If you are going to let the company define it, what do you think is going to happen?
Wow. I’ve never seen anyone write the word puss-ball before. Brilliant.
While you don’t have control over an asshole employer, if you have one, most of us who are of sound mind and body have the capacity for personal responsibility.
Balance is a misnomer. We must own the moment and have mindful presence at work, at home, in high school halls, in shopping malls – be cool or be cast out (sorry, channeling Rush).
Every frickin’ one. It’s takes a lot of work and courage as you say, but we can do it.
I am so in your ballpark — and in your section — and in your row. (Probably not on your lap, tho.) I think Jack Welch said it right at the SHRM annual conference. There is no work/life balance. There are only the choices you make and their consequences. If we have to talk about balance, we should talk about work/non-work balance. Work is part of life for most of us. It isn’t different than life. It’s part of life. The trick is integrating it intentionally and healthily into our life without creating consequences that deter our life mission. Great post.