Work life balance: A Matter of Energy

     Jeff Bezos, of Amazon fame, in an interview, indicated that he doesn't like the phrase "work-life balance" because he considers the phrase "debilitating" -- implying a trade-off between work and non-work time. His general idea is that your time at work will provide the energy for you to take home and your time at home (or off work) will provide the energy for you to jump-start yourself at work.
     There are a couple of fairly large assumptions in that. The first is that your work is something that you love, with people you enjoy working with, and has just the right amount of stress to keep you at optimum performance. The second is that the same is true for your time at home (or off-work). I applaud all of the people in the world in this situation and wish them the very best. It also can be considered as an ideal goal for businesses and individuals.
     This principle can be generalized in such a manner that it can be applied to everyone's life. Although the terms are not exactly applicable, each part of life can be considered endothermic (absorbing energy) or exothermic (producing energy). Jeff Bezos' situation describes something where both worktime and non-worktime are exothermic and contributing to a large net positive amount of energy to use for many purposes.
     While I hope that no one reading this is in such a situation, a work area where the same thing is done over and over, with little (or no) interpersonal interactions, could be considered to be a high endothermic situation. The person just cannot wait to get off work and all their energy that is produced off-work is used to allow them to get through their workday.
     It can be argued (and I cannot say that I am certain of the best answer) that a work situation where you hate the work, or have negative interactions with people at work, would be a more energy losing situation. Personally, I don't think that is true. It may be much more stressful and less healthy but you probably head home and talk about all the terrible things that have gone on during the day. That may be negative (and I would not encourage you to continue in such a position and situation) but I would not call it low energy.
     So, what is meant by "work-life balance"? I propose that it is a net positive amount of energy. As said earlier, an ideal goal is a very strong net positive result from a very energy-producing work-life AND a non-work-life. However, if you have a net positive amount of energy then you are probably able to live a life that you can enjoy. This definition removes the idea of a "trade-off" but it does imply that everything that a business can do to improve work life AND the support they can give to non-work life will be beneficial to both the business and the individual.