Personal responsibility, motivation, self-determination

As a member of the late 1960s generation, the question of a good work-life balance was with me from the very beginning. Influenced by a libertarian spirit in which personal responsibility and motivation were considered the highest virtues, I was taught early on: Life is what you make of it yourself. Cold water was not a spectre, but a familiar element – an expression of self-determination.

At the beginning of my studies, the focus was less on academic prospects and more on the need to develop key skills – in order to be a competitive performer after graduation. There was no question of work-life balance. The weekend was a place of retreat where occasionally no work was done. Not much has changed to this day. I’m not dissatisfied – but I’m rich in experience, including two moderate burnouts. Be careful what you’re asking for.

Playful lightness paired with serious commitment

My son is now studying mechanical engineering with great passion – and looks to the future with a completely different attitude. The question of a safety net hardly arises for him. He explores what is possible and what he enjoys with playful ease and serious commitment at the same time. From my perspective at the time, this seems almost alien – and yet today it seems so healthy, so mature, so life-affirming.

For a long time, work-life balance was an ideal that I chased after with a certain naivety. Or as Pink Floyd so laconically put it: “The sun is the same in a relative way, but you are older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.”

Hope beyond revving up and convenience

Today, I look at the term work-life balance with a critical eye. In its basic idea it seems absolutely right to me – but in its practical implementation it is often far removed from life. Why this separation between “work” and “life”? Is work not a part of life? Am I not alive during work – and only come back to life when I leave the company premises?

Unfortunately, this originally sensible concept is now being distorted in two ways:

• The performance maximizer propagates work-life balance as a social ideal, but in reality consistently shifts the balance in favour of work. How dishonest – and how predictable.
• The entitlement avoider , on the other hand, uses the concept to justify inertia and emphasizes that more is already being achieved than is required. That, too, is boring as hell.

The healthy inner drive

But there is a third group: creative, life-affirming people who do what they do with passion and joy – without ever thinking about work-life balance. They act from an inner drive, not out of a sense of duty. They work because they want to – and leave it when they don’t want to. An expression of true freedom and self-determination.

From today’s perspective, Generation Z seems to me to be closer to a real balance than my generation ever was. Although their focus is more on ‘life’, they are approaching the ideal with a new seriousness. And that, yes that, fills me with hope. Our children – our future.