There’s one topic that I spend hours of each week thinking about and talking about with my team at work. It’s our level of identification with our work. Our literal work-life balance is the time we put in, the hours spent at our desks or online—answering emails, Slacks, texts, or calls. Our mental work-life balance tends to be correlated. It’s the way we are affected by our work and the way we identify with our job, our employer, or our career.

There’s no right or wrong way to be. As long as there’s awareness and you know what works best for you in this time of your life, you’re golden.

It’s normal to want to talk about our current jobs, the job search, and day-to-day events related to work and how they affect our headspace. Let alone our identity.

Through this series, I’ll review existing literature and interviews that delve into an assortment of  topics related to our work identity. I’m also going to interview folks in my community, as I’m a big believer that the best content doesn’t only triangulate data points from different posts and resources, but highlights the personal narratives behind them. 

We’ll talk to people who have different ways of prioritizing their work—whether it’s full-time, part-time, non-profit, entrepreneurial, contract or freelance. They have built habits and found hobbies that bring them leisure and restoration to be a great professional. Here are a few soundbites:

“Once I finally embraced the fact that it was OK to not have a clear division between my work and personal life, it took off a lot of pressure and actually helped bring more awareness to my work and brand.”

“Work life balance to me means getting the time and space to do what you care about with no affiliation to your employer.”

“My job presents a lot of issues and it's an exercise everyday in thinking of the most efficient, fair, and equitable solution. Do we do it right every time? No. But it's something new everyday and I'm working with people to grow themselves as humans, not the stack of money in their wallet.”

“For me, work/life balance isn't just about hours in a work day and leaving at a reasonable hour so I can make time for workout classes, happy hours with friends...it's about being COMFORTABLE with doing so.”

“Beyond simply living in New York and constantly answering the question “what do you do?”, I am a work horse at heart. I'm up early answering emails, and stay late if there is more to do. But, as with everything, I've always sought to take the bad with the good and dive head first into my job, and have in turn, let it define me.”

I’ll talk more about me in the next post in this series. The evolution of my identity, together and separate from my work, is unfinished. My trajectory and mentality around this is deliberate. I coach others in my workplace to define this and find the balance that serves them, and have seen it play out in real time.

Follow along and reach out with your ideas and feedback. My intent is not just to share stories that will sound familiar, but to normalize the different ways we all define our identity.