Work-Life Balance this, Work-Life Balance that. This is a term that is used thousands of times a day at offices across the world. The question is: How many people actually know what it means? Sure, it’s an easy term to throw around, but I’ve found that a lot of people who use it don’t really know its definition.

Here is my personal definition: Work-Life Balance can be defined as the delicate relationship between the amount of Quality time you spend at work versus the amount of Quality time you spend at home.

Why is Quality highlighted? This is because I divide time into the following two categories:

• Quality - This is time that I really need. Be it to go run an errand, catch up on work, spend time with my fiancé, even sleep. Time under this category does not go to waste.

• Regular - This is time that I’m not too concerned about. It could be some down time where I don’t have anything to do, but at the same time I don’t need it to relax. How could this be? If you take a look at your day, most likely not all of your down time is needed to relax (busy periods excluded, which we all encounter). It is time you could be using constructively but have nothing to spend it on.

I am not too concerned with Regular time. Since I could be doing anything with it, if I have to end up using some to do extra work, this isn’t a problem as I don’t need it anyway. However, like most people, I have a certain amount of Quality time set aside for my work, and a certain amount set aside for my personal use. This is the time that I care about, and this is why my Work-Life Balance definition only concerns this time.

It can be hard to put a quantitative number on how much of this time you set aside for work and personal use. In general, your normal work hours would be your work Quality time. The time you need to sleep, run errands, relax, and spend time with your family and friends can be classified as your personal Quality time. While this will fluctuate from time to time, you should have a general idea of what the balance between the two should be. It’s when this balance swings to one side for an extended period of time that you need to be concerned. If this occurs, you need to take a step back and make sure you aren’t over or under extending yourself.

What would be some examples of this? Say you are working consecutive days of overtime at your job for a long time, maybe a month. You could even be putting time in on the weekends. This would be a case where you are sacrificing parts of your Quality time set aside personal use to do work, for longer than might be good for you. Another example would be if you find yourself taking a lot of time off of work for personal reasons (which are not urgent), and then you end up not getting enough of your work done. In this instance, your personal life is taking too much of your Quality time away from your work.

Here then is the key to keeping a healthy Work-Life Balance: remembering that the pendulum between work and personal Quality time can swing both ways, yet keeping it somewhere close to the middle as much as possible. If you can accomplish this, then you’ll be much better off at both work and in your personal life.