You gotta be kidding me…right?

So what does the dream look like…

Imagine yourself sitting on a tropical island somewhere fancy….when suddenly you check your smart phone and in the last 30 minutes you have received another email dump of 20 emails. 14 of them are likely an autoreply from some company that you opted into 6 months ago but have not had the courage or the patience to opt out….with the other 6 being just useless messages from a variety of vendors and spam.

You close your eyes again intent upon catching the last glimpse of sunlight as the afternoon is slowly fading into night….when suddenly you remember there was an important project you left behind at work…you delegated it to a capable team that you have worked with previously on similar projects in the past….BUT you still wonder whether they will deliver the project to the customer on-time. Wait…hold on just a minute….aren’t you on vacation? (Sigh…..)

Don’t worry you are not alone.

Don’t feel so bad it’s not just you…

Globally, approximately 50% of management works more than 40 hours per week with clocked hours gradually increasing every year for the last five years…and showing no sign of slowing down (1). So what does this really mean anyway? Well one thing should be pretty obvious…we don’t know how to relax and find a balance between drive, ambition, and …well...common sense. So then you come up with a bright idea to start a business thinking that you can work the hours that YOU want to work…without having someone looking over your shoulder. Ummmm….not exactly. According to a recent research from the Alternative Board, approximately 30% of small business owners report working in excess of 50 hours per week with 20% reporting 60 hours or more and 80% feeling like they worked too much (1).

Self-care, rest, & relaxation are very critical…

The U.S. Ranks 30th out of 38 countries in terms of work/life balance which is basically…the bottom 20% (2). That’s not good….when you look at the Netherlands which ranks #1 in terms of work-life balance only 0.5% of employees are working 50 or more hours per week (2). In the Netherlands there are 15.9 hours per day devoted to leisure and personal care (2).

So why should you care what’s the big idea anyway?

In 2015 there were 658 million days of personal time off (PTO) that were not used by employees, which resulted in $223 billion in total economic impact (1). There are definitely health implications as well….people who don’t have a proper work…life balance can suffer from consequences ranging from sleep disorders to heart disease and diabetes (1).

Are there strategies for creating better work-life balance?

Of course….the top three work-life balance countries are Netherlands, Denmark, and France. Below are some of the strategies that they use.

Netherlands has one of the shortest work weeks globally with an average of 4 days per week and 29 hours on average (2). What is even more amazing is the fact that employees can reduce their hours to part-time without losing their job (2).
In Denmark workers have flexibility when to start their job and can work from home if they choose (2).

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