“Weinstein’s The Ethics of Work-Life Balance”

In his short essay “The Ethics of Work-Life Balance,” Bruce Weinstein argues that one of the five fundamental ethical principles is fairness. He states that people’s work-to-life imbalance is not fair, both to others and themselves. In the past, as Freud said, work and love were essential components of a happy life, but people overwork in order to feed their family and pay bills, nowadays. He claims that being a good manager should mean being a good human being. This means knowing not only how to manage one’s career, but also one’s life by giving due time to family, friends, community, self, and spirit. I agree with Weinstein’s argument that workers should balance their work-life and social life because an imbalance harms people’s health, produces low quality work, and damages relationships with loved ones. People should have time to work and also a time to leave the work behind.
Weinstein is right when he argues that workers should have a balanced work and social life because work-life imbalance harms people’s health. A stressful job can lead to unhappiness that seeps into people’s leisure life and leads to bad health. A recent study showed that people who are stressed out by their jobs have a higher risk for dementia later in life. This is bad news for the American worker, who often has long hours and can often sacrifice his/her work-life balance on the way to climbing to the top of the corporate ladder. Healthline explains that, “stress can cause a variety of symptoms and can affect one’s overall health and wellbeing,” from less serious conditions such as the flu to more serious health issues such as respiratory or digestive problems. Either way, the fact that stress can impact people’s health so much is even more of a reason why maintaining a healthy work life balance is important. Taking the time to look after oneself by exercising, eating well, and relaxing can contribute to limiting people’s health problems and make people more efficient workers during business hours. For example, my mom used to run an academic business on her own for about twenty years and now her health has forced her to retire. She was a very hardcore business woman who didn’t scruple about staying overnight almost every day including weekends, as I barely saw her at home. In my childhood memories, I remember she had knitted brows, and a stressed face every time I saw her at work as well as an I.V. in her arm at home. Of course, all of the hard work that she has done paid off, but she lost her health. As the years went by, her body got weaker and she started to see her doctors often. As a result, she has had so many surgeries to cure such problems as thyroid cancer, a herniated cervical, and more. She still takes medicine for these surgeries to this day. My mom’s story shows that overwork does damage people’s health. People should have time for work and time for their social life because the imbalance hurts people’s health.
Weinstein is also right when he argues that workers should balance their work and social life because a work life imbalance produces low quality work. It’s not just about the quantity of working time, but more importantly about the quality of the work. Sitting down at a desk all day long is not going to make the work better. In fact, it may even by wasting time. The article “Brain Science: Focus-Can you Pay Attention?” states that the average human attention span is approximately five minutes and others state that most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than about twenty minutes at a time, though they can choose repeatedly to re-focus on the same thing. This means it is a waste of time to sit at a desk constantly working because half of the time, workers are not even fully focused on their work. Therefore, it’s not going to produce the best quality work whether the task is technical, creativity, or analytical. Due to these facts, overworking is inefficient, as it hurts the work place as much as it does worker’s health. Overworking makes workers exhausted and loose focus half of the work time as it was discussed and mistakes are going to be easily made. Of course, this is going to end up with a low quality work and it is not fair to the work place. Because the work place is going to get impeded by this overworking, slowing the development of its contents and that contents’ value. This study shows that a work life imbalance does produce low quality work. People should balance their work and social lives for themselves because the imbalance produces low quality work.
Weinstein is right when he argues that workers should have time to work and also a time to leave work behind because work-life imbalance weakens people’s relationships with their loved ones. When workers spend more time on their jobs, it means less time spent with their loved ones outside of their work. As people spend less time with their loved ones (for example, their spouse, children, and friends), it becomes harder to really know about them. This creates a connection lose between the worker and all of his or her loved ones, especially with children. Children deserve attention and love from their parents because they are still growing up, but American parents easily neglect children due to their overload of work. For instance, a few years ago, one of my cousins was bullied at his school. He needed someone to talk to or cry to, but sadly, no one was there for him. Of course, his parents did not know about this until they saw his scars on his face one day. All they had been doing for him was making sure he was not starving and had enough financial support for his school, clothing, etc. His parents needed to be there for him when he needed them, he needed them to spend more time with him to know what kind of person he is and what he was going through in his life. Unfortunately, he doesn’t talk to his parents or live with them anymore, because he has hatred towards them for this. His parents are trying to fix this, but it’s too late; the door to his heart has already closed shut. My cousin’s story proves that work-life imbalance weakens relationships with loved ones, especially with children. People should live a balanced life – work and social with their loved ones and themselves because the imbalance weakens connections and relationships between them.
Ultimately, Weinstein applies one of the principles of ethics, ‘fairness’, to overwork and his strong argument that workers should not overwork and live a balanced out life for themselves and loved ones. Work and love are two essential components of a happy life, but now, people overwork to support their own family and to live. Workers should never lose track what, but more importantly who they are working for: their loved ones as well as themselves. The modern worker should learn to give themselves a break and engage with loved ones every once in a while, for not only them but for themselves.