The Work Benefits of Work-Life Balance

Much has been written about the benefits of work-life balance-- more energy, more time spent with family, ability to focus on one thing at a time.  And while I completely agree, most of these benefits tend to accrue to the "life" half of the balance.  Meanwhile, the "work" half of the benefits tend be squishy, intangible things like "more energy" or "not feeling burnt out."  While I agree strongly that these elements are crucial, they are also shockingly hard to quantify and therefore easy to dismiss by people that take themselves too seriously.

What I write about today (mildly ironically while taking some time off at the end of the year), are clear benefits to a work environment that stresses balance: insight, planning, and revealing weaknesses.

Insight

Insight, forever associated with a Greek in a bathtub, is a beautiful feature of our minds which allows up, seemingly in a moment of rest, to connect all of the threads of the problems before us.  Like Archimedes, I find insight happens …