As I am writing this, I am working on a Sunday afternoon instead of hanging out with my husband and daughter. Rather than being a poster child for work-life balance issues, my choice of work and work hours allows my husband and me to create a life that makes sense to us. We are living our values – creating a quality life by devoting quantity time to those who mean most to us. My husband and I serve a number of roles – spouses, parents, professionals, Sunday school teachers, volunteers, tennis partners, and elder care providers. Our lives are busy and we find that we have very little “free” time but, unlike many people, we don’t feel overwhelmed, we feel lucky. We discovered - something simple, yet profound - that work-life balance isn’t about having more free time; it’s about devoting your life, and the hours within it, consistent with your values and passions.

It wasn’t always so. I used to travel 4 days a week and my life consisted of two activities – work and sleep. I spent most of my time with people who meant the least to me, doing work that didn’t talk to my heart. I helped create work-life balance issues for others – by being one of the corporate leaders striving for productivity by creating jobs that employ “half as many people…paid twice as well, and producing three times as much” (The Age of Paradox, Charles Handy). I fell victim to one of these very “full jobs” and, like many, hired others do to the personal work I no longer had time to do and found that I used consumption as a pitiful replacement to living a meaningful life.

It’s no wonder that about half of us believe that we aren’t living a balanced life (CIO Magazine, Sept 17, 2002 “IT Careers and Work Life Balance”; Fast Company, July 1, 1999, “Results From How Much is Enough”). U.S. work hours are increasing and now top those worked by all other industrialized nations (BBC Online Network, September 6, 1999, “Americans work longest hours”, USA Today, December 16, 2003, “U.S. workers feel burn of long hours, less leisure”). Longer work hours, logged by men and women with women comprising over 50% of the workforce (HBS, March 8, 2004, “An Introduction to Work-Life Balance”), along with the demands of parenting and caring for aging parents, present a challenge that stymies even the best and the brightest. Eloquently expressed to me, a senior executive, mother of two writes, “I'm having a heck of a time figuring out the career thing now that I have two running around. It's much more complex and difficult than I anticipated.”

It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, that senior corporate leaders don’t believe work-life balance is an important issue. Some economists believe that the 90’s productivity gains were due to longer work hours, rather than efficiency gains (USA Today, same reference as above). Jack Welch has stated that great managers don’t have work-life balance issues because, quoting the words of GE HR executive Susan Peters, they have installed “home processes of backup resources and contingency plans. It’s easy to understand why Jack never hears “the top 20% of any organization complaining about work-life balance” because their 80-hour work weeks are consistent with their primary values – getting paid well to do interesting work where they get to call the shots. It sounds like a pretty good life until you read the part of Susan Peters’ story when, even with her “home processes”, she cried her eyes out on an airplane after leaving her seven year old for weeks at a time.

Others believe that work-life balance is unattainable and agree with the views expressed in the Fast Company magazine article entitled “Balance is Bunk” This article concludes that balance isn’t really a choice because the global economy won’t allow it and “leadership requires commitment, passion, and…a lot of time.”. Instead of seeking balance at any point in time, this article recommends taking a long term view and creating balance over the “chapters of one’s life” because, “in each chapter, we have different responsibilities and priorities: children, home, travel, aging relatives.”

Work-life balance is personal and has nothing to do with the global economy and everything to do with your local economy, specifically, if you are financially secure due to savings and employability. Anybody who refers to the “global economic” forces as a rationale for abandoning work-life balance is speaking from a policy, not personal perspective. In addition, work-life balance is a day-to-day challenge and cannot be deferred to another “chapter”. From a professional perspective, there are really only three chapters – childhood (until 25), adulthood (until 50), and maturity – and most of the work-life challenges pile on top of each other during adulthood (including the development of marketable skills, starting a family, planting roots in a community, keeping your aging body fit, etc.). It’s comforting to think, “you can have it all, just not at the same time”, but a more truthful statement is, you can have some of it, some of the time – so you had better choose carefully.

If your values extend beyond yourselves and your boundaries extend beyond the four walls of your company, you must face the uncomfortable reality that the solutions to work-life balance must come from within. Those who have the power to influence policy don’t understand the issue and it is evident not only in their words and actions, but also in the anemic “work-life balance” programs (such as concierge services, elder counselors, emergency day care) that they have sponsored.

Each of us must accept the challenge to help resolve work-life balance issues – both personally and with those whom we lead. Unfortunately, when I look at what people say versus what they do, I have to agree with Jack Welch that many people are “work-life moaners” rather than work-life doers. For example, consider the executive who leaves professional services only to accept a job with a three hour daily commute? What about the executive who has her sister-in-law raise her kids? I could go on, but instead will close with the question to be considered in Part II of this article: Why are the majority of successful professionals all talk and no action when it comes to achieving work-life balance?