{"id":435,"date":"2016-09-19T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kent-business-matters\/?p=435"},"modified":"2023-03-30T09:17:23","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T08:17:23","slug":"worklife-balance-do-you-need-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/2016\/09\/worklife-balance-do-you-need-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Work\/Life Balance – Do you Need it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of this quarter’s theme of Wellbeing and Happiness in the Workplace we asked our Alumni Bloggers to share their views on work\/life balance. Carl Lincoln achieved 1st Class Honours in Business Studies with a Year in Industry before going on to achieve a distinction in his MSc in Value Chain Management in 2013. Having met his current employer ITL (Integrated Technologies Ltd) in his final year studying at KBS, Carl is now ITL’s Business Development Manager. Work\/life balance? Carl Lincoln can’t stand the phrase.<\/p>\n

I hate the phrase \u2018work\/life balance\u2019.\u00a0The balance part I agree with.\u00a0Just ask a tightrope walker – when things aren\u2019t in balance there\u2019s generally something going wrong. No matter what you\u2019re doing, being well-centered is a healthy state-of-mind.\u00a0The problem is that to me \u2018work\/life balance\u2019 can easily be misinterpreted. It implies that working and living are two different things, and this simply isn’t the case.<\/p>\n

Allow me to illustrate just how depressing it would be if working and living were two separate entities:The average yearly working hours in the UK is 1,677 (1,789 in the US). That\u2019s 209 8-hour days.<\/em>The current UK retirement age is 66.\u00a0<\/em>Assuming you work 209 days a year from age 22 to 66, you\u2019re at work 9,196 days \u2013 that\u2019s about 25 full years of your life!\u00a0<\/em>25 years spent \u2018not living\u2019? No thanks!<\/em><\/p>\n

The part of your day spent at work is still part of life. In fact, based on the numbers above the only thing you spend more of your average week doing is sleeping!\u00a0During my undergraduate degree I did a Year in Industry. Whilst I learned a lot about myself during that time it wasn\u2019t really in an environment that suited me all that well.<\/p>\n

When deciding on your next move after you graduate, start by thinking about what you want in life. That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean coming up with a 5, 10, 20 year plan but instead looking at what makes you happy now. What do you enjoy most about University?\u00a0What motivates you to paint? Why do you work out every day? What is it about stamp collecting that you get a kick out of?\u00a0If you can drill down and really get to the heart of why you do what you do you can start looking at jobs that will give you the same buzz.\u00a0And once you start doing something, if it doesn\u2019t feel like living, get another job.<\/p>\n

\n

Alumni Blogger:<\/h2>\n

Carl Lincoln<\/h3>\n

<\/a>My name is Carl Lincoln and I head up the marketing department of a medical device design and manufacturing company called Integrated Technologies Ltd (ITL) based in Ashford, Kent.<\/p>\n

Despite being tempted to carry on to a PhD I finally managed to pull myself away from the University of Kent in 2013 after an undergraduate degree in Business Studies and an MsC in Value Chain Management.<\/p>\n

Expect short, punchy, actionable advice that I hope will help students to get into the right mindset for finding their ideal graduate job and making the most of it when they do.<\/p>\n

View Carl on LinkedIn.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of this quarter’s theme of Wellbeing and Happiness in the Workplace we asked our Alumni Bloggers to share their views on work\/life balance. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74553,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[151357,54,169048],"tags":[807,130761],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20002,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/20002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}