Work Life Balance

Last time I wrote my blog was 12 Dec 2011. It was my first feature on interview with Indonesian poor. It seems a long time ago, and although I tried to find time it was not possible. There were many things I had to do at work. Managing a team of people and at the same time adjusting to a new work environment in the past 8 months.

It took me 6 months to adjust from an associate professor job to a managerial position at an oil and gas company. Much adjustment rests with coordinating people; this took about 50% of the time. The other half is to learn and do the job at the same time.

Once 6 months have passed, I noticed I changed my work strategy. I become much more cooperative and try to find common grounds to settle issues. I prioritize better since the most challenging part of working in industry is to understand and manipulate the connections between time and cost.

Different business types have different time-cost correlations. For university business, professors do not worry about cost except costs of equipment and amount of grants as there are virtually no profit and loss calculations.

That is the work challenge and I survive so far. The other component I have to worry is life. My life. What I want to do with my life. What I want to achieve. Working for a company is good, up to a point, but I know at some point I have to be on my own.

The work life balance is tricky for me. I need good salary to support my family, but I myself prefer free time to do whatever I want. I am always attracted to become a traveling teacher monk. It is not a job; I mean: who gives a shit about job if you become monk, anyway.

I am one who believes my lifestyle should dictate what my job should be. Not the other way around. I am still working on making it a reality.