Achieving Work/Life Balance for Consultants (Or…Who Moved My Personal Life?)

Earlier this year I taught a resource management unit as part of the Master of Education degree at Monash University. The unit focused on the concept of sustainability as it applies not only to wealth creation and ecological sustainability but to human sustainability in terms of community and social well-being. Or as this is more commonly referred to, ‘work/life balance’. The term came into use during the late 1980s to describe the maintenance of a balance between the responsibilities a person has at work and at home (Benveniste in Dunphy, Benveniste, Griffiths and Sutton 2000). Being involved in that unit of teaching got me thinking about how the work/life balance is experienced by self employed consultants or contractors, because I was certainly not a good example of managing it well. On a sunny Good Friday afternoon I was sitting at my computer marking 52 essays describing how the work/life balance was addressed by my students without realising the irony of my situation…. where was my balance and why wasn’t I practicing what I preach? The self employed will be nodding their heads knowingly, because they alread