That context is still relevant to a lot of people, but for many it makes a lot less sense, and work-life balance more seems to be refer to not letting work consume your life when you can be contacted anytime anywhere day or night.
Right—though you could say the underlying core sentiment is still somewhat similar in that regard.
“Old work-life balance”—work and life are separate spheres, don’t let the work sphere (a time block of say 9-5) expand to take up space at the expense of the other sphere, a separate time block.
“New work-life balance”—let’s try to not let the work sphere intrude too much into the other sphere as a single time block (e.g., turn off the screen after 5 pm and that’s it) but if that doesn’t work pragmatically (e.g. on-call, work from home), still minimize the time/effort that work saps from you (that 10 min interruption to check an email followed by 5 min of worrying and planning for the next day could be shortened to 3 min total, or something, then forgotten about before returning to dinner).
In one case, I imagine work as one single bloc of contiguously colored territory and non-work as another, and you want to avoid the one territory expanding too much at the expense of the second. In the other one territory has made small patches of enclaves into the other, but the balance is the same—you want to make sense total area of one color is not too big or small, whether it’s contiguous or not. (The area or size of patches could be time, mental effort or whatever in the metaphor).
That context is still relevant to a lot of people, but for many it makes a lot less sense, and work-life balance more seems to be refer to not letting work consume your life when you can be contacted anytime anywhere day or night.
Right—though you could say the underlying core sentiment is still somewhat similar in that regard.
“Old work-life balance”—work and life are separate spheres, don’t let the work sphere (a time block of say 9-5) expand to take up space at the expense of the other sphere, a separate time block.
“New work-life balance”—let’s try to not let the work sphere intrude too much into the other sphere as a single time block (e.g., turn off the screen after 5 pm and that’s it) but if that doesn’t work pragmatically (e.g. on-call, work from home), still minimize the time/effort that work saps from you (that 10 min interruption to check an email followed by 5 min of worrying and planning for the next day could be shortened to 3 min total, or something, then forgotten about before returning to dinner).
In one case, I imagine work as one single bloc of contiguously colored territory and non-work as another, and you want to avoid the one territory expanding too much at the expense of the second. In the other one territory has made small patches of enclaves into the other, but the balance is the same—you want to make sense total area of one color is not too big or small, whether it’s contiguous or not. (The area or size of patches could be time, mental effort or whatever in the metaphor).