Work-Life Balance: What Really Makes Us Happy Might Surprise You

Written by Lis Ku, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, De Montfort University. Narrated by Marie T. Russell, InnerSelf.com. Finding the right work-life balance is by no means a new issue in our society. But the tension between the two has been heightened by the pandemic, with workers increasingly dwelling over the nature of their work, its meaning and purpose, and how these affect their quality of life. Studies suggest people are leaving or planning to leave their employers in record numbers in 2021 – a “great resignation” that appears to have been precipitated by these reflections. But if we’re all reconsidering where and how work slots into our lives, what should we be aiming at? It’s easy to believe that if only we didn’t need to work, or we could work far fewer hours, we’d be happier, living a life of hedonic experiences in all their healthy and unhealthy forms. But this fails to explain why some retirees pick up freelance jobs and some lottery winners go straight back to work. Striking the perfect work-life balance, if there is such a thing, isn’t necessarily about tinkering with when, where and how we work – it’s a question of... Continue Reading at InnerSelf.com (plus audio/mp3 version of article) Music By Caffeine Creek Band, Pixabay Narrated by Marie T. Russell, InnerSelf.com About The Author Lis Ku, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, De Montfort University, is an experimental social psychologist who is interested in the impact of socially-grounded values such as materialism on various types of behaviour that have important implications for both individual and societal well-being. Using laboratory and field methods, her work focuses primarily on testing the application of values and motivational processes to domains such as education, work, health, and prosociality. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.