Preparing Future Faculty

One of the best tips is letting go of being a perfectionist. Unfortunately you have to give a little in one area to better the other areas.

I learned that you have to sometimes change your definition of success when it comes to balancing work with your personal life.

I learned that pacing yourself can be crucial for balancing work and personal life.

This article resonates with my own definition of work-life balance, or rather my interpretation that it is an artificial bifurcation of one's life. Or, "Again, there is no work-life balance in academia. You need to figure out what works for you and when you work best."

Prioritizing, planning for the short-term and long-term, and setting boundaries.

This article says all of the things I want to shout from the rooftops. Work-life balance is an artificial construct, but it has real implications, and so many of those implications are determined by the workplace culture and "home" culture developed for and by us through large employers. More to the point, "It's imperative then that the companies we work for and lead develop values, culture and policies that support the full lives of employees."

This article helps us to understand how the work-life balance conversation emerged and why it is so meaningful, and so different, from traditional conversations about work versus personal life of prior generations and decades. The dialogue is largely driven by the new economic realities of the 21st century and, in turn, the inability and/or attempt by large employers and employees to adjust.

This is alike many other recent, and trending, articles/blogs/etc. on HuffPo and elsewhere that explore the ties between feminism and work-life balance, and the structured inequalities that perpetuate the misnomer of work-life balance, particularly for women. What it helpful about these discussions is that - increasingly - they extend beyond the female-professional-as-mother dialogue and to the professional-as-caregiver dialogue, which so many of the Sandwich Generation, Millennials and Generation Y will face all too well.

I liked that this article suggested to network and join support groups.