Show #26 Yoga Radio: July 16, 2014 – Work-Life Balance (and Yoga)

Work–life balance is a concept including proper prioritizing between “work” (career and ambition) and “lifestyle” (health, pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development/meditation). The work-leisure dichotomy was invented in the mid-1800s. Paul Krassner remarked that anthropologists, use a definition of happiness that is to have as little separation as possible “between your work and your play”.Some theorists suggest that this blurred boundary of work and life is a result of technological control. Technological control “emerges from the physical technology of an organization”. In other words, companies use email and distribute smartphones to enable and encourage their employees to stay connected to the business even when they are not in the office. This type of control, as Barker argues, replaces the more direct, authoritarian control, or simple control, such as managers and bosses. As a result, communication technologies in the temporal and structural aspects of work have changed, defining a “new workplace” in which employees are more connected to the jobs beyond the boundaries of the traditional workday and workplace. The more this boundary is blurred, the higher work-to-life conflict is self-reported by employees.