Should we separate our home and work lives?

Is it important to separate your home life and your work life? I see self-employed and telecommuting people in forums talking about that separation as if there’s no question it’s important, but I wonder.

50 years ago, not everyone had to work for a paycheck. It wasn’t too expensive to leave “the city”, buy some rural land somewhere, grow your own food and provide your own electricity and water, and suddenly “work” wasn’t this abstract thing where you left home, tried to put aside concerns about your personal life, got a paycheck and spend it at stores and with creditors. “Work” was something where you did what you knew needed done and reaped not a paycheck but the actual results: food and other necessities.

In the last 20 years, laws here in the US have updated to reflect the understanding that a smart society doesn’t ask its employees to be family-free robots during work hours. We’ve improved on the employee’s right to stay home with a sick child, for fathers to stay home with newborns, and for new mothers to know their jobs are assured if they come back within a certain amount of time. You are not two people, and being the servant of two masters is too much to ask. The ’90s also saw a rise in self-employment as people figured out they could start businesses or do freelance work and be much happier than they were answering to managers and companies who didn’t necessarily share their goals or values. This decade has seen a rise in telecommuting as mangers slowly figure out people don’t have to be in front of their faces to be working.

All these trends point toward the possibility of a blended life where work and personal life aren’t so separate. Most people are dreading it, but is that because of work or because of jobs? Life involves work no matter your employment status – no one knows that better than “housewives” and “stay at home moms” who put in hours a day of labor it would cost over $100k/year to outsource to a paid professional, and most of them do their “jobs” better than a pro because it’s personal for them. Is the right answer to keep your work and home life separate, or would it be better to aim for “work” that fits in with your family life? Work you’re passionate about and don’t mind sharing with your family/friends if they’re interested?

It’s a personal choice, of course – some people really like their jobs, or prefer having any job to no job at all because they need that structure for their life. I’ve only started thinking about this for myself, but I find the idea of a blended life in which work and my personal life are one seamless event tempting because I realize separating the two makes me feel like I’m two different people – or at least that I play a character when I’m at work. What do you want for yourself?

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