February 11, 2025

This past year, I have been reading about work-life balance. I have been looking for resources that would help our workers in cross-cultural contexts. Over the past few years, I have heard many of them tell me that work-life balance is a huge issue for them. So in 2024, I sought to both understand the problem more fully and look for ways to equip our missionaries to better deal with this challenge. The following is a summary of some of the things that we have learned.

The Myth of Work-Life Balance

I quickly learned that many authors question whether a work-life balance is even possible. Our May 2024 edition of our monthly newsletter, the SEND U Training Tracks explored the concept of work-life balance and questioned whether it is a myth. Pursuing balance can actually create additional stress and anxiety.

The 7-Slice Method

In this newsletter, I introduced David McNeff’s book, The Work-Life Balance Myth: Rethinking Your Optimal Balance for Success. This book suggests that we have seven different parts of our lives that need attention, not just work and family. These slices include work and family, but also professional, personal, physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects. It is important to give time to all these slices. In so doing, our stress can be significantly reduced. So instead of striving for a perfect balance, let’s rather focus on giving at least some attention to each slice of life.

Work-life balance assessments

In our June 2024 edition of Training Tracks, I continued that discussion on work-life balance. One of my teammates helped me design a simple spreadsheet that a person could use to evaluate how much of their time goes to each of the 7 slices. The goal again is not to spend an equal amount of time in each slice. Neither is the goal to identify the ideal amount of time we should spend in each slice. The sample numbers in the graphic below are simply for illustration purposes.

Instead let’s seek to intentionally spend some time in each slice on a daily or weekly basis. Even one hour each week is much better than no time at all. Maybe one hour is all you need. If you want additional ways of assessing your work-life balance, you can find a few other assessments on the SEND U wiki.

Boundaries and Balance

In our August 2024 edition of Training Tracks, I looked at the topic of boundaries. In order to attain some semblance of work-life balance, we need set clear boundaries. These boundaries will help us gain a sense of control and balance in our life. I highlighted a well-known book, Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. My colleague, Alanna Brown, has also addressed the topic of boundaries and work-life balance in her podcasts this year. See episodes #23 and #24.

Identifying Your Strengths and Loves

But probably the most helpful resource that I discovered on this topic was Marcus Buckingham’s book Nine Lies about Work. Buckingham says that the very term “balance” implies that an object is stationary. But we are living things, and in motion. We are also changing and growing, and our environment is also changing. So any equilibrium is regularly disrupted. Frankly, if we had to choose between growing/ adapting and finding balance, I think we would all choose growing/adapting. So instead of balance, Buckingham says we should talk about health. Health is more about adaptability and productivity than balance.

Why then so much talk about finding work-life balance. Is it because of how we see our work? We often see work as draining and life as restorative, hence the need for balance. Yet, what if our work could also be life-giving and restorative?

Marcus Buckingham advises each of us to identify what we love to do. This idea is further developed in his next book, Love + Work: How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life. The things that we love to do are our strengths. Seen in this light, our strengths are not necessarily the things that we are naturally good at, but rather the things that give us strength. We might need some training to get really good at something we love. But we look forward to doing them, even if we are not yet really good at them.

Weaving the things we love into our work

Once we have identified our loves, we need to weave those “loves” into what we do at work. Buckingham talks about the 20% rule. Seek to give at least 20% of each day’s work to the things that you really love to do. Research has shown that doctors who are able to give 20% of their work time to the things they really love are much less susceptible to burn-out.

Do you have opportunities each day to use your strengths and do the things that you really love to do? I believe that each of us can find ways to make sure that at least part of our ministry tasks include things that we really love, tasks that we look forward to doing. We may need to have a conversation with our team leader or field leader about reconfiguring our ministry assignment. But with the great diversity of ministry opportunities before us, we should be able to give 20% of our work time to the things that we love to do.

In so doing, work can become something that rejuvenates us, rather than draining us. This does not mean that we no longer need to spend time in the other 6 slices of our lives. But the constant urge to find that near-mythical sense of work-life balance might just be replaced by a grace-filled adaptability to the challenges that life brings us. It other words, we will be serving out of health.

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