As I was doing a little research for this post I realized the more common definition here is nothing like the “wellness definition”.  If you check out what The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has to say you’ll find a whole bunch of stuff about work safety, OSHA, risk management and on the job hazards.  Well, that’s not at all what the wellness vector is about.  The University of California at Riverside has a much better definition for our purposes:

Occupational Wellness is the ability to achieve a balance between work and leisure time, addressing workplace stress and building relationships with co-workers. It focuses on our search for a calling and involves exploring various career options and finding where you fit.

I’m lucky enough to work for a company that places a tremendous amount of focus on helping employees manage work-life balance (check out Intel’s take on the topic). Maybe that’s because we’re, for the most part, a bunch of engineers that will work ourselves to death if someone doesn’t stop us. That’s the key point – its extremely easy, when you do something that you love, to let it take over your life.  Some call us workaholics and I suppose that’s an OK representation because when it comes down to it, if you love your job but are making personal sacrifices to the point of causing problems elsewhere in life then you are flirting with an addiction.   

I can tell you what has worked for me, and I’m very much interested to hear from others. First I should say that for a long time I didn’t exactly role model good work/life balance.  I shudder to think of the sheer volume of time I spent at work early in my career and what the real opportunity cost was.  At the same time though, it’s always tough to know how things would be different now if I hadn’t “paid those dues” so to speak.

I’m not going to tell anyone that I have a magic recipe for maintaining work/life balance but I’ll submit posts as times goes by explaining some of the programs we have at my work, some thought from my colleagues and, of course, some of my own experiences.  For now though I leave this post with a thought fromThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People^®

It’s just a thought because I can’t recall the exact verbiage that was used but in my own mind here’s how I remember it – a simple method for prioritizing items (work and life):

Learn to say ‘yes’ and avoid saying ‘no.  Build your list of TODO items and rather than focusing on what you can’t get done (what many of us do when overwhelmed) focus only on what must get and and put a mental ‘yes’ next to it.  When you get to something that isn’t a no-brainer then just leave it alone.  It will work itself out if and when you get through the ‘yes’ list…