Quotes & Sayings About Life Work Balance

Time Progression: Wasting Spending Managing Investing — Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Go work at the post office or Starbucks if you want balance in your life. — Jason Calacanis

Imagine working 20% smarter instead of 20% longer ... Work-life balance and startup success at any stage aren't mutually exclusive. There are enough hours in the day to be effective and present. — David Cummings

There is no work-life balance. We have one life. What's most important is that you be awake for it. — Janice Marturano

I've learned, finally, how to balance work with having a personal life. I had to separate my personal and my professional life but now that I only have loving people in my life my personal and professional life blend together. — Doreen Virtue

When in doubt, ask yourself this: What would a really happy person do? Then do that. — Alexander Kjerulf

Instead of this fruitless debate about having it all, men and women should focus on what make us happy. Instead of comparing our lives with people we don't know who are making sacrifices we don't see, we should try to find the right balance between home and work life. — LZ Granderson

It's really hard, when you have a heavy workload, because it just really pulls you out of your life. It's nice to have some balance. I get to work and enjoy that part of me, but then I have time to have a life and be with my kids. — Blair Underwood

It's rare to find women who have that balance between work and life, who are really psyched for another woman's success. — Dana Fox

Life experience is the new work experience. — Richie Norton

Work-life balance was a mistake from the start. Because we don't really want balance. We want satisfaction. — Matthew Kelly

I think for all the women who are working parents it's difficult to balance your work-life and your home-life. You make obvious sacrifices because you really just want to be with your family. — Kate Hudson

Thinking about work as a day job has made a big difference in the way I approach what I do. It also helped me not to confuse who I am with what I do. — Bob Goff

I have never met a woman, or man, who stated emphatically, "Yes, I have it all.'" Because no matter what any of us has - and how grateful we are for what we have - no one has it all. — Sheryl Sandberg

Everyone has to work where he is able to maximize what he has been given to the fullest. — Sunday Adelaja

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. — Thomas Merton

So every time you think about your work-life balance issue, remember what your boss is thinking about - and that's winning. Your needs may get heard - and even successfully resolved - but not if the boss's needs aren't met as well. — Jack Welch

Don't work too hard. Try to maintain balance. Don't make work your whole life. — Bronnie Ware

A true balance between work and life
comes with knowing that your life
activities are integrated, not separated. — Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

I just want to make sure I have a sense of balance between work and life, because work is my life and the lines can get really blurry. — Drew Barrymore

Get up and move at work today! Don't spend the whole day on your butt. Take a walk. Get some exercise. Play a game. Move! — Alexander Kjerulf

Getting married has certainly made a massive difference to my own life. So I am committed to giving support for family finances and having the right policies for work-life balance that make it easier for couples to have a rich family life. — Gordon Brown

My role models are Madhuri Dixit and Kajol. Both actresses have done a wide variety of roles. That is something I wish to do. On the other hand, I also want to be like a Hugh Jackman or an Angelina Jolie because of the lives they have outside movies. Because of the kind of balance they strike between their work and life outside of it. — Tena Desae

Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is. — Evan Williams

Soon I will return to the office, to shuffle paper, delete emails and avoid the Typing Dead. — Fennel Hudson

BEANNACHT For Josie On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the gray window and the ghost of loss gets in to you, may a flock of colors, indigo, red, green and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the curach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life. — John O'Donohue

Tennis is all about mental toughness, and you have to keep your head in the game. I make time to relax away from competition pressures, travel and intense training schedules to make sure I'm looking after myself. Taking time out with family and friends helps to maintain the work-life balance everyone needs. — Samantha Stosur

You will spend more of your waking hours at work than anything else. If that time doesn't make you happy it's a huge waste of life. — Alexander Kjerulf

Time Progression: Wasting >>Spending >> Managing >> Investing — Elizabeth Grace Saunders

I don't have any babies or ambition. I have it all! — Nan Little

Maybe if everything was beautiful, nothing would be.
People saw one thing, they swooned over it. They saw this other thing, they pounded it with sticks.
Maybe there had to be variety for life to work. Swoon over everything, you get bored. Beat everything with a stick-boring. — Dean Koontz

We need balance. We need to balance our inner life with our outer life. Nature is always sitting there waiting to help us, but we have to do the work. Nature is probably the greatest teacher that we'll ever have ... the earth and nature. — Dave Davies

No, they didn't have any money, the sea was dangerous and men were lost, but it was a satisfying life in a way people today do not understand. There was a joinery of lives all worked together, smooth in places, or lumpy, but joined. The work and the living you did was the same things, not separated out like today. — Annie Proulx

Remember: Research shows that emotions are contagious. How will you infect others at work today? — Alexander Kjerulf

The speed of modern life is an oppressive thing, and the corporate world is quick to punish those with an honest heart. — Fennel Hudson

It is called working your ass off. The difference is what you are willing to sacrifice. For every writer who wants balance in their life, there is a guy like me who gives up a lot to make their dreams come true. There is always going to be someone out there that knows they have to compensate for maybe having less talent with harder work and preparation. — Mark Cuban

You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin? You summoned a spirit from the dead, but with it came one of the Powers of unlife. Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you. The power you had to call it gives it power over you: you are connected. It is the shadow of your arrogance, the shadow of your ignorance, the shadow you cast. Has a shadow a name? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character. It is true, of course, that a genius may, on certain lines, do more than a brave and manly fellow who is not a genius; and so, in sports, vast physical strength may overcome weakness, even though the puny body may have in it the heart of a lion. But, in the long run, in the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under the name of character; and if between any two contestants, even in college sport or in college work, the difference in character on the right side is as great as the difference of intellect or strength the other way, it is the character side that will win. — Theodore Roosevelt

I grew up understanding the pros and cons of what you're getting into and knowing what comes with your job. I like to keep my private life private, and then work is work. I feel so far I've had a really good balance with that. — Lily Collins

You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel - a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady — H.G.Wells

When I was a teenager, a psychic told me, 'Your biggest challenge will be life-work balance.' That's certainly turned out to be true! — Natalie Massenet

Curiously, the balance seems to come when writing is woven into every aspect of my life, like eating or exercising - one flows constantly into the next: I'll wake up and have coffee, read the news, then write a letter or two (always in longhand), then go teach, and after teaching write a bit in a journal - dreams, what I had for breakfast and lunch and why I had it, what's on the iPod, sexual habits, etc. - then read a bit, then work on a real bit of writing ... you get the idea. — Kevin Keck

One's personal life and work are inseparable. — Michael Hyatt

See, happiness at work is an emotion. It comes from inside of you, and like all other emotions it is difficult to define, but inescapable once it's present. Or not present. Can you define love? Poets have tried for thousands of years and aren't getting much closer. But when you're feeling love, you're acutely aware of it, even though you have no formal definition. — Alexander Kjerulf

No senior politician can expect to have work-life balance. I'm afraid there are some jobs for which work-life balance inevitably goes out the window. If you want work-life balance you just have to accept that you can't be a senior member of a government, or for that matter a senior member of an opposition. — Tony Abbott

Jeff didn't believe in work-life balance," says Kim Rachmeler. "He believed in work-life harmony. I guess the idea is you might be able to do everything all at once. — Brad Stone

Did you ever stand on a street corner in American at five o'clock in the morning?
I did. — Jack Kerouac

In life, ninety-nine per cent is about good luck! Just remember that, son.' In a slightly argumentative tone I asked, 'But uncle, what about the balance one per cent? Surely that must be hard work or talent?' Laughing loudly, he declared triumphantly, 'The final one per cent? That's called bloody good luck, my boy! Simply keep at it and wait for your bloody good luck to kick in! — Ashwin Sanghi

For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe. — Ruth Bernhard

My coworkers should understand that I need to go to a party tonight
and this is just as legitimate as their kids' soccer game
because going to a party is the only way I might actually meet someone and start a family so I can have a soccer game to go to one day! — Sheryl Sandberg

Balance is everything. And I'm not just speaking from a road perspective - even from home. My wife and I work out of the house and we always struggle to find that balance because when work is around you 24/7, it's easy to neglect the little things in life that really help us to rejuvenate or heal. — Chuck Ragan

Always have a plan B and C, because if it doesn't work out there are other things you can focus on. It's important to have a balance to your life, regardless of what you're doing. I've been playing at this level for a long time, but I've got interests outside of rugby, like my family and my children. They keep me sane. — Filo Tiatia

I was near-delirious. Gazing up at the pillared skyline, I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man. Buying myself a drink in the smaller warrens below, in all their ethnic variety (and willingness to keep odd and late hours, and provide plentiful ice cubes, and free matchbooks in contrast to English parsimony in these matters), I felt the same thing in a different way. The balance between the macro and the micro, the heroic scale and the human scale, has never since ceased to fascinate and charm me. Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in that air which made one think - made me think for many years - that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it. — Christopher Hitchens

We have to design policies that have meaningful impacts on the quality of life of women and families. And that's something that I know I can speak passionately about because whether I'm in the White House as First Lady, as long as I have kids and I'm trying to have a life, I'm gonna be trying to make this balance work. — Michelle Obama

Perhaps the answer is that it is necessary to slow down, finally giving up on economistic fanaticism and collectively rethink the true meaning of the word "wealth." Wealth does not mean a person who owns a lot, but refers to someone who has enough time to enjoy what nature and human collaboration place within everyone's reach. If the great majority of people could understand this basic notion, if they could be liberated from the competitive illusion that is impoverishing everyone's life, the very foundations of capitalism, would start to crumble (p. 169). — Franco Bifo Berardi

I am not at work, or at the supermarket, or waiting for a bus (metaphorically or otherwise). I am free. — Fennel Hudson

Invest in your work life balance. Time with friends and family is as important as times at work. Getting that out of balance is a path toward unhappiness. — Stephen Gillett

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends and spirit - and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls - family, health, friends and spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. — Brian Dyson

Do what you love allows us to valorize elite workers, those who choose to overwork, and ignore those who have to overwork. — Miya Tokumitsu

Win back two days of living? The sense of freedom is overwhelming! Switch off your mobile phone and consider your options. — Fennel Hudson

The challenges that I face today are the same challenges we all face. Trying to balance your life between work, family, loved ones, your husband, your wife - boyfriend or girlfriend. If you have kids - balancing that, balancing your work with the time you spend with your kids. The idea of wanting to be a good parent and then the motivation to be a great parent. Whether you're black, white, any color. Rich, poor, regardless of religion, cousins of culture, we go through those. We have the same challenges. — Dwayne Johnson

I think all of us are multitasking a little more today than we used to or than we would like to. And I think that the issue of work-life balance is a critical issue for every company around the world. — Irene Rosenfeld

When I was growing up my mom was home. She wanted to go to work, but she waited. She was educated as a teacher. The minute my youngest sister went to school full-time, from first grade, mom went back to work. But she balanced her life. She chose teaching which enabled her to leave at the same time we left, and come home pretty much the same time we came home. She knew how to balance. — Martha Stewart

Those who feel satisfied with their personal lives are more satisfied with their careers and perform better. — Michael Hyatt

You may not believe in anything called a work-life balance, but your body certainly does. You need to monitor and nurture your body. — Vivek Wadhwa

The path to happiness at work starts with a simple decision: You must want to be happy. If you don't commit to being happy at work, you won't be. You won't make the choices that make you happy. You won't take the actions needed to get there. You won't change the things that need to change. — Alexander Kjerulf

Don't work harder, work happier. — Alexander Kjerulf

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. — Alain De Botton

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Europeans have it better than the Americans. The Americans work too hard. The balance is out of whack. Europe's hung onto a little bit more of living a life and then working as well. — Jason Clarke

Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress: Working hard for something we love is called passion. — Simon Sinek

I swam very competitively till I was 15, then I swam for fun until I was 18. But athletics remain a very big part of my life. I try to keep that as much in balance with work as I can. — Teddy Sears

The phrase "work-life balance" tells us that people think that work is the opposite of life. We should be talking about life-life balance. — Patrick Dixon

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families
only to find that by then their families were gone. — Larissa MacFarquhar

I think it will help people have a better work-life balance, that's really important - that's the centre ground for me, it's the issues people care about in their lives. — David Cameron

Sometimes we just have to suck it up and do what we have to do, until we are able to do what we want to do. — Mark W. Boyer

He did not say so, but the words behind the words told me that he would rather have launched me into a good marriage than watch me row against the tide at my own work. It remains that a woman with an incomplete emotional life has herself to blame, while a man with no time for his heart just needs a wife. — Jeanette Winterson

All of us face hard choices in our lives. Some face more than their share. We have to decide how to balance the demands of work and family. Caring for a sick child or an aging parent. Figuring out how to pay for college. Finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it. Whether to get married - or stay married. How to give our kids the opportunities they dream about and deserve. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

I couldn't stand to be separated with my wife for months. It became quickly apparent to me that I needed to find a balance between my absolute work obsession and a private life that we could share without my disappearing all the time. — David Bowie

I split my commission and personal work about 50 per cent each. It is important to get that balance in life. — Nathan Sawaya

I, Alex Cross do solemnly promise-to all those present at this birthday party- to do my best to balance my life at home with my work,life,and not to go over to the dark side ever again. — James Patterson

One of the stated values at IronPort was 'work/life balance,' but I wasn't living it. I was rarely home. And when I was home, well, let's just say I wasn't particularly helpful or cheery. — Scott Weiss

You can escape completely, seeking an alternative life, or you can play the game and go absent without leave. How you do it is up to you. — Fennel Hudson

How do I structure my life to be at peace with who I am, & comfortable with what I'm doing & not doing? — Elizabeth Grace Saunders

If you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you, even though you do not really like it and know that part isn't real. — Qiu Xiaolong

Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls
family, health, friends, integrity
are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. — Gary Keller

When work is going well, your home life struggles and vice versa. If my kids are OK - that is the most important thing. I strive for balance in my life, though. — Bobby Davro

If you live for money, no amount will ever satisfy you. — Richie Norton

There's no work-life balance without making decisions and without courage. — Michael Hyatt

Work / life balance comes down the three simple words: your feelings matter too. — Jason Garner

If you're worried about life-work balance, something is probably wrong with your life or your work. Instead of agonizing over balance, get excited and create change. — Chris Guillebeau

You have to learn to balance work, family, a personal life; it is a part of life. — Juanes

Work-life balance for founders doesn't look like work-life balance for everyone else. Starting a company isn't a nine-to-six job - or a nine-to-nine job, or a nine-to-midnight job. — Kathryn Minshew

These values are signposts toward another way of living: simplicity of living, as much as possible, to retain a true awareness of life; balance of physical, intellectual, and spiritual life; work without pressure; space for significance and beauty; time for solitude and sharing; closeness to nature to strengthen understanding and faith in the intermittency of life. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

So this talk, or touch if I were there,
Should work its effortless gadgetry of love,
Like Dante's heaven, and melt into the air.

If it doesn't, of course, I've fallen. So much is chance,
So much agility, desire, and feverish care,
As bicyclists and harpsicordists prove

Who only by moving can balance,
Only by balancing move. — Michael Donaghy

Do we work for and pay for all this convenience in order to live our lives, or do we live our lives in order to work for and pay for all this convenience? — Colin Beavan

You were not born to make only a living but to live life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

If I had a long-term partner, I don't think I'd be an actor. It'd be too much of a strain; you have to work too hard to balance that life with a family and a mortgage and all that stuff - it would be too much. — Rory McCann

Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality. — Sam Altman

Life balance is a myth. It's an illusion and the very pursuit of it is driving us crazy. For me it's about proportion - it's really a work hard/play hard equation. — Danielle LaPorte