Andrea is a dairy farmer. She gets up in the dark to feed the herd, works through until lunch which she takes in the bungalow that serves as a farmhouse, then carries on working until dusk. 

In her mid-fifties, she can count the number of holidays she had on the fingers of one hand, is in robust health and hasn’t seen her GP for fourteen years. 

When she talks about her commitment to the farm, she says that the land belongs to her – but also she belongs to the land. She lives on the land, as does her husband, and although her sons have decided dairy farming is not for them, they still come back and work the land themselves. 

I met Andrea, having stayed in her converted stables a few years ago and the way she lives and worked has stayed with me. Andrea’s life is work-life congruent. Her sense of self is bound up with work in a healthy way, meaning she doesn’t need or want boundaries. It’s more than ok because the way she lives and works keeps her thriving.

Is work-life congruence a way of preventing burnout?

What if the work-life balance many of us are desperately searching for is not just about taking lunch breaks but finding something deeper? Work can leave us feeling powerless, energy-drained and in conflict with our identity.

In the articles on the excellent Career Shifters website, they argue that we want to compartmentalize work because we don’t want to associate with it. We are desperate to take off our work clothes and ‘be ourselves.’ The answer is to look at work and find out what truly excites us and then create more of that so we can feel more personally aligned with our work.

What about medics?  Are we a special case?

I would argue, yes!  

Medicine is so demanding, so high stakes, so emotional and has a load of issues right now that are incongruent with our wish to deliver care (moral injury, anyone?), that switching off and having boundaries between work and home is essential.

Medicine does a good job of taking a big piece of your identity pie and in these days of burnout, it can only be a good thing to use the other parts of your brain and do other things you enjoy in different ways. 

Speaking for myself, I’m more than happy to write and attend to my coaching practice any time – but I like to keep medicine firmly at work because it’s high pressure and demanding.

I feel so stuck about my work – what shall I do?

If work feels totally incongruent with yourself, try taking a diary and doing a study of yourself for a couple of days. 

What bits do you still really enjoy? 

What activities come very easily to you? 

How can you craft your job to create more of this and who do you need to have a conversation with?

What do you think about work-life balance for doctors?

What do you think about work life congruence? Should we continue to pursue work-life balance for medics? Are we a special case? 

Or do you find the concept of work-life congruence more interesting?