Work life balance: When does the healthy strive become the useless struggle?

We all love a great success story filled with dogged determinism. The actor who lives in her car and works odd jobs so she can become a blockbuster sensation. The high school dropout who puts in 20-hour days to launch the next game-changing internet company. The immigrant who moonlights as a janitor while working his way up to become CEO of the world's largest bank.

Most people will never become famous enough to garner widespread interest in the sacrifices they make to meet work goals - the sleep deprived IT professional who perpetually works 32 hours straight to keep systems running smoothly, a public servant who misses his child's school events to keep up with paperwork or an executive assistant who answers the beck and call of an executive 24/7…

It's easy to admire the single-minded focus to achieving goals, after all, you've been pumped full of motivational quotes, memes and inspirational speeches most of your life. As a society, we tend to celebrate commitment at all costs and equate giving up as failure.

But, when does the healthy professional strive transcend into a superfluous struggle that jeopardizes our physical and mental health. When does going over and above in your role to progress become no longer worth it. When should you throw in the towel?

The answer is simple. When you associate a job with more pain than pleasure, it's time to re-evaluate. After all, the only reason we strive for success is the underlying belief it will make us happier in some way on another. If this is clearly no longer the case, then it's time to move on.

What's important is that we find balance in both our professional and personal lives. If your job is affecting your physical health and mental wellbeing, its a clear sign your strive might not be worth it. Sure working a long shift to complete a project might be part of the job, and something you're willing to do to get ahead. But if one late night turns into an expectation to work 24/7, at some point, somethings got to give.

Finding this balance for some isn't easy. Many spend years to identify the issue and take even longer to address it. Some are willing to self sacrifice in the pursuit for success. A junior lawyer knows the hours will be long to ascend the ranks. But, when this imbalance becomes unsustainable, the result is often burnout, exhaustion or something even worse.

In the modern working world, the concept of work-life balance has become a core expectation of employers. Good companies understand that there is no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance. In fact, they know that if their talent is living a healthy balance life, their performance and productivity improves exponentially. As a result, work-life balance has become among the more sought after benefit by all walks of talent, and sectors that maintain detrimental working habits are being left behind. So, if your employer doesn't recognise this, then it is time to move on.

Yes, it's important to strive for success and reach your professional goals, but this can be achieved without impacting you health and wellbeing. There is a tipping point in all jobs where your healthy strive can become a useless struggle, and your ability to recognise and address this will influence your overall happiness. At Ignite, we value work-life balance and ensure we support people in both their professional and personal endeavors as much as possible. We connect great talent to like-minded organisations who understand the importance of work life balance for their employees.