Select Parts of the Whole

Do family problems affect your working life? Do you take problems at work home with you at the end of the day? Today, let’s take a look at how our work and family lives interact.

For a long time, employers have been concerned about how troubles at home may affect their employees’ on-the-job performance. But a major study done some time ago by the Families and Work Institute says that the truth may be closer to the other way around. Workers are far more likely to bring job-related problems into the house than they are to take family conflicts to the job. In our crowded lives, we typically spend more time at work than we do (awake) at home.

Has this been your experience? In our 40+ years of working with both employers and employees, we’ve learned that it’s really quite impossible to split off any part of anyone’s life and put it away so that it doesn’t affect the other parts. What happens at home is bound to affect what goes on at work and vice-versa.

It is also true that the same attitudes, expectations, beliefs, and problem-solving abilities are used to deal with all of life’s challenges, whether they occur in the workplace or in the living room. That’s why it is important to work on personal development techniques, because when you improve the quality of life at home, it can quickly spill over to improve productivity and quality at work.

We can’t keep personal growth in a box, dividing up our lives into separate, singular segments – select parts of the whole, so to speak. Development in one area stimulates growth in another, and there is ample room for growth in all facets of our lives. Once that growth happens, the desire for excellence reaches out to touch everything.