Work life balance quotes often leave much to be desired.
Work life balance: is it crap or not?
Ever heard someone say “balance is crap”? They’re so edgy with their “I’m not afraid to tell it like it is” attitude aren’t they?
Balance is an idea epochs old, (1) first a philosophical idea, an then (2) a practical idea.
So what does it take to understand that idea, and then apply it practically in our lives?
It requires some tweaking, involves focus and you’ll end up being selective with what you spend your time on, but achieving a state where each of your life areas is given the attention it deserves is definitely possible.
The sooner we do that, the better life gets, because we can’t just have all of one thing and zero of another thing. Our relationships, our work, our goals and success in life all need the care and attention they deserve, and they need it now.
Life Counter Balance Device (work life balance tracker)
How to Create Work Life Balance
Ultimate Productivity Bundle (time management resources)
Work – Life Balance Quotes
For the sake of brevity, there are 21 listed here. If you want the full 85 work life balance quotes, you can download them here for free (no email required – instant download).
1. “You don’t have to make yourself miserable to be successful.”
Quote by Andrew Wilkinson
How do you define personal success? Is it definition of your own creation or someone else’s? What someone else wants for themselves might not be the thing that makes you happy. So unless you define success based on your own standard, you might be following a path that leads to misery results rather than happiness results.
2. “A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.”
Quote by Marilyn Monroe
It’s easy to lose yourself when you don’t pay attention. Without conscious effort to control the path we take in life we can easily default to autopilot. Autopilot means the thing is running by itself without is paying attention to it.
[content_container max_width=’500′ align=’center’]“One night at work I had an epiphany: all this money, all this success, and the woman I loved was home alone, again, for the sixth night in a row.
I remembered feeling like I was on top of the world laying in bed with her, playing with her hair. I wondered how I’d gotten to this point, where I was so focused on the wrong thing. All those years ago, I was perfectly satisfied living in our small home with just her, now I’m here, a slave to something that doesn’t even love me back.”
[/content_container]3. “We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own todo list.”
Quote by Michelle Obama
Light your own candle before you decide to light others, or remember the strategy airlines use. Do you know how effective you’ll be at helping someone else with their oxygen mask before yours is on? What happens to the results you’re trying to get when you’re not taking care of your number one priority in life (yourself)?
4. “A time for everything: a time to relax and a time to be busy, a time to frolic and a time to labor, a time to receive and a time to give, a time to begin and a time to finish.”
Quote by Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Balance is crap only because humans are awful at it. It’s difficult to give the right amount of focus, pressure, effort, and emphasis to a thing. We often put out too much or too little. Because we know it’s important to be productive in our professional lives, we take that to mean all day.
Because we know it’s necessary to focus on our social and romantic relationships, we take that too mean all the time, at the expense of our personal life.
5. “You can’t truly be considered successful in business if your home life is in shambles.”
Quote by Zig Ziglar
6. “There’s health, wealth, love and happiness, and you gotta have all of em.”
Quote by Tai Lopez
Decide whether or not you would trade lives with them. There are some who have all the money in the world, but they’re overweight. There are some who are fit and rich, but they’re nasty to people and nobody likes them. Then there nice people who’ve got the health they desire but are constantly stressing about bills.
- Health concerned the vehicle that pursues the other three, so it comes first on the ladder of importance. Health determines your brain chemistry, your outlook on life, vitality, energy and motivation. Health determines everything, including your mindset.
- Money is the easiest way to destroy the other areas of life. Even two people in love can end up divorced when there is too much money stress.
- Love is broad term that includes all of our relationships.
I remember a line in one of Eminem’s songs “Fine line”.
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“and this house is quite big, but it ain’t when you can’t leave it, and I feel so isolated, nice I made it, but it’s like I paid the price for fame twice, I hate it.”
[/content_container]You might not have the issue he has (not being able to leave your house because you’re so famous) but it rings true that money and fame at the cost of other important areas can leave you wanting still.
Get your relationships, social & romantic life in check. Don’t just get ripped, make the money and quit.
7. “We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.”
Quote by Arianna Huffington
There are millionaires who work 40 hours a week. They work hard, but they work the same 40 hours as the guy/gal who drives a forklift in the warehouse. Success is a particular balance between the amount of work you do, and the quality and type of work you do.
8. “Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
Quote by Gary Keller
Work doesn’t really remember. People, relationships, your health, and your image all have a certain amount of memory to them. Which is harder to repair when damaged.
9. “Everyone is so addicted to the idea that living your passion means you have to get paid for it. That’s not a rule you have to follow. You could easily have your passion for life exist outside of work!”
10. “You can’t have everything you want, but you can have the things that matter to you.”
Quote by Marissa Mayer
Life requires prioritization. Each day, we can be pulled in a thousand different directions, and we will be if we do not choose the direction ourselves. Choice means priorities, and it’s our job to make sure those priorities are achieved.
11. “I’m not sure about complete balance. I think that’s an enlightened stage of life. For normal folks, balance really means counterbalance. Notice when life gets out of whack for you and correct it.”
A quote from me.
Everything should be done according to time, place and circumstance. Even if something requires a general response, you’re better off treating it individually first to make sure that’s correct. What I mean, is that you might not need to focus hardcore on your relationships each day. Maybe you just got back from vacation with your family and all need some time away from each other.
Maybe work doesn’t need your full attention today since you were hyperproductive last week.
I like to pretend I’ve got a pocket full of marbles and certain bags to put those marbles in. Each day, I need to figure out the current state of my life, and which bags require which amount of marbles.
When it comes to health wealth love and happiness, one day might be 4/2/2/1, and the next day might be 1/1/3/4.
12. “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”
Quote by Carl Sandburg
The most valuable resource you have is your own intangible resource: time, focus, life, energy.
13. “Don’t confuse having a career with having a life.”
Quote by Hillary Clinton
14. “To have someone who never makes a mistake, never finds her personal life in disarray, never worries about work-life balance? I think that would be unreal.”
Quote by Sophie Kinsella
15. “For fast acting relief, try slowing down.”
Quote by Lily Tomlin
16. “Burnout is about resentment. Preventing it is about knowing yourself well enough to know what it is you’re giving up that makes you resentful.”
Quote by Marissa Mayer
17. “You will never truly feel satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.”
Quote by Heather Schuck
18. “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Almost nothing matters. I identify with this so much. I’m the guy who’s always saying “irrelevant” ;). We all have strengths and weakness, and where some lack the skill to prioritize the essential, others are blessed with a keen eye that can see that very few things in life actually matter.
Life is a combination of variables and results. Each day we live, do, and receive. When it comes to receiving, we receive the results of our doing, and, if we’re smart, we’re hyper focused on doing only what moves us toward the results we want.
It’s important to have the end in mind. Focusing on things that are irrelevant is the same as running off the road.
19. “It’s All About Quality of Life And Finding A Happy Balance Between Work And Friends And Family”
20. “There is an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most…it just requires the courage to take a different approach.”
Quote by George Anders
Categorize the options in your life as urgent, important, would be nice to, and useless.
21. “The challenge of work-balance is without questions one of the most significant struggles face by modern man.”
Quote by Stephen Covey
Is Work Life Balance Possible?
Yes, as long as we understand what balance in human life really means.
Is Work Life Balance Important?
Work-life balance quotes are nice but they only tell us counter-balancing our life is crucial.
How crucial? What happens when you focus too much on work and not enough on your marriage?
Apply this logic to any other area in your life and you’ll see the need to counter-balance your life properly and frequently.
Work Life Balance Benefits
- Feeling more in control of your life in general
- Increased productivity
- Happier and less stressed life
- Improved health and wellbeing
- More you time
- More enjoyment of your work
- No more missing out of the important stuff
How to Achieve Work Life Balance
Step 1
Determine how important each of the life areas is to you and how much focus you need to give each in order to thrive.
Step 2
Grade each of those areas as they are in your life now on a scale (1-10/ Good-bad)
Step 3
Create a plan of action to improve the areas that need it. Remember to maintain those that are doing well.
Step 4
Keep a journal where you document your progress and attention to each of the areas important in your life. Consult this journal each week (or more often if you want) and make adjustments as necessary.
Work life balance Example: if you see that you’ve spent a lot of time at work this week, make a small family vacation this weekend to catch up with those you love.
