I remember on the first week of my study, the program director showed some list of HR issues and asked the students which issues might be the most ‘interesting’ to discuss in these days. A student answered that ‘aligning HR and business strategy’ is currently a ‘hot topic’. Well, that’s somehow true – yet, I was actually expecting that ‘HR Technologies’, ‘People Analytics’, or ‘The Diminish of HR’ would be on the list. Other students, I guess plenty numbers of them, said that ‘work-life balance’ would be interesting to be discussed.

I personally am not a believer of work-life balance, in the sense that it should be 50-50. I mean, I try to see that working is part of my life journey. So, what I need to do is actually trying to harmonize or to create such orchestra of all things that happen in my life, including work. I was fortunate enough to have really good experiences in my previous jobs about this respective topic. The flexibility that I had, the egalitarian leaders and friends who feels like family, and the meaningfulness of the job that I did, help me to avoid to say ‘No’- when it comes to working overtime or over the weekend for several times. But again, it’s indeed a personal view, it might change based on some conditions. For instance, some of you who made a commitment to marry and/or already have children, might define this ‘balance’ differently. It’s indeed about your personal choice, some ‘given’ conditions, as well as maybe a bit of mindset.

Anyway, that’s not the main topic I want to share from this piece. Hahaha.

So, recently I met a friend in my university. She looked really tired. With her sleepy eyes and very low energy, she said to me: ‘Oh, I am so tired of studying. I want to go home and sleep’. Yet she didn’t go home and remain the campus. LOL.

Surprisingly, I heard that this friend was actually come to the university from 8am to 5pm every day – in the reading week! Such a learning dedication, in contrast with me or some other friends who traveled or did the reading elsewhere outside the university during that week.

I was intrigued by her statement that she was really tired of studying, not because of my impression to her learning dedication (sorry about that, LOL). But, the fact that she was doing a writing (an assignment) about ‘Work Life Balance’ while saying that. Oh, what a lovely irony! Yet, thanks to her. I was then contemplating whether I am doing good enough or not in harmonizing my student-life ‘adventure’. I truly respect her dedication to learn things, but I might not be able to be like her in studying.

I believe we all have our own way of studying/learning. Some of us enjoy to sit in the library to read books, some others prefer to watch videos to understand better, and some people might also listen to audiobooks while doing morning or evening jog. In another perspective, each of us do also have different way to ‘enjoy the life’ – might be cooking, travelling, hanging out with friends in a bar / café, or having a ‘me’ time. Understanding the best way on how we study and how we enjoy our life, and harmonizing both of them to make the most of our journey will be so important. Otherwise, we will keep grumbling about what happen to us.

We might be familiar already with terms of mindfulness, consciousness, and self-control. I don’t want to talk about their definitions, but making sure we are able to apply those concepts in our daily life will be useful. We are surrounded by time limitation, constant changing of contexts, the variety of emotions, as well as the demand and supply of interactions. Being aware of all of those dynamics will help us harmonizing the life that we have in some respective contexts we are in: it can be both work-life or student-life.

Again, my ‘balance’ definition on work-life balance or student-life balance is not 50-50. It’s about becoming fully aware that we will not live forever in this world, then we need to make the best harmony or orchestra of life – based on your goal, based on your call.

@yosea_kurnianto