Severed or not??

The pursuit of work life balance remains a challenge for most school leaders. How do you leave the big decisions, dilemmas, planned cultural shifts and impending strategies at school?

The answer is that you can’t, and to think otherwise is probably naive, as we (humans) are wired in a such a manner that we can’t ‘flick off the switch’ at the drop of a hat. However, it’s not binary, and there are ways to help and school leaders can seek ways to help themselves. Hobbies, quality family time, and simply doing nothing can provide ways to help take your mind off work but that is probably temporary respite.

So what’s the solution?

The nuclear approach would probably be to step away from the stress, but that’s not always possible for many reasons. Imagine a world where we could flick off the switch and have two separate lives - work and home (rest), where the two are exclusive and have no cross over.

The brilliant Apple TV series, Severance, gives us a glimpse of what this could look like, where your personality is split into your work placed ‘innie’ and your home life ‘outtie’. Without giving away any spoilers, working as a ‘severed’ employee at Lumon Industries does not necessarily bring to a close the stress of bringing work home, but it might just give some food for thought about this important human dilemma.