What “work-life balance” means for women today, when the definition of “work” has become so broad that “life” has become all the more complicated for it.

Letter From The Editors

Melanie Mignucci & Emma Lord

At the end of 2018, we asked 283 Bustle readers how they felt about their work-life balance. While the responses and circumstances varied across the board, they all seemed united by a common thread: fear. In Doing The Most, we wanted to look at the root of this fear so many of us have internalized — in particular, what this fear means for women and nonbinary folks working today.

What Being A Barista Taught Me About Work-Life Balance

I’ve always known that I wanted to be a writer, and I’ve always romanticized what life as a writer would be like. I’d have the freedom to travel the world and take my work with me. I’d write for the publications I grew up reading. As an…

How Women Are Using Instagram To Redefine Networking & Make Authentic Connections

Last fall, as I walked down a crowded street in Brooklyn, a Link NYC console caught my eye. The art on display showed a woman in a downward dog yoga pose over the Brooklyn Bridge; underneath it was an Instagram handle, belonging to 27-year-old…

How To Balance A Job With A Side Hustle, According To People Who’ve Done It

These days, having a single nine-to-five, secure job till the end of your working life is increasingly rare. CNN reported in 2017 that more than 44 million Americans now have a side hustle — a job, or several, alongside their main income-earner —…

Working Remotely Improved My Work-Life Balance

I woke up to someone knocking on my door at 7 a.m. I opened my eyes and, for a second, I didn’t know where I was. The first thing I saw was my work desk, piled with television scripts and revised script pages of all colors — pink, green, yellow, a…

How To Advocate For Your Mental Health In A Difficult Work Environment

Mental health issues affect many people, especially in the workplace. While we may not realize the negative impact our work environment may be having on our co-workers or even ourselves, the World Health Organization reports that depression and…

Here’s How 10 Women Manage Their Work-Life Balance While Working Around The Clock

Finding some sort of balance between work and your personal life seems like the ultimate goal for a lot of people these days. But that balance is starting to look really different as more millennials are affected by the gig economy, and working…

What Work-Life Balance Means To Me, As A Disabled Person

There’s a plethora of self-help books and articles online that claim to have the answer about how to strike the perfect balance between your career and personal life. Many of these resources, however, don't take into account how disability can…

What Work-Life Balance Looks Like In Other Countries, According To A Global Report

How good are you at juggling work commitments with the rest of your life — seeing friends, going to the gym, doing laundry, taking chill-out time for yourself? We might think of the struggle of work-life balance as a uniquely American thing, what…

10 Self-Employed Women Share What They Do Every Day For Work-Life Balance

Striking the right balance between work, relationships, and personal time is an ongoing and ever-changing process for most of us. We all feel stuck at times when it comes to maintaining a healthy work-life balance — and avoiding the awful symptoms…

What It’s Like To Leave A Job For Better Work-Life Balance, According To 5 People Who’ve Done It

Work-life balance is an area that challenges a lot of us. At the start of your career, young women are often expected to prioritize work — a positive thing, to be sure, after hundreds of years of being kept out of the workforce — and leave other…

How To Maintain A Work-Life Balance When Something Personal Happens, According To Experts

Maintaining a work-life balance can be really challenging, especially in the stressful, modern, technology-obsessed world. We tend to constantly be multitasking, trying to balance work with side hustles and socializing and remembering to eat a damn…

The Science Of What A Work-Life Balance Should Feel Like

While a work-life imbalance sometimes comes about because you're working 14 hours every single day and not seeing anyone you care about, sometimes it's a much more subtle, gradual transition into a situation that's unsustainable. "A lot of people…

Women Are Asking To Be Paid What They're Worth — So Why Aren't They Getting It?

If you're a woman with a full-time job, you've probably had this nugget of advice thrown your way: women make less money than men because they don't ask for more. This thinking became popular about a decade ago, when economist Linda Babcock's…

Women Are Still Scared To Voice Their Needs At Work — Here's What We're Doing About It

At the end of 2018, we asked 283 Bustle readers how they felt about their work-life balance. While the responses and circumstances varied across the board, many of the answers we received seemed united by a common thread: fear. We’re “worried” our…

I Took A Step Away From My Career To Take A Step Forward In My Life

When I turned 30 I was gripped with that same blood-curdling question that I’ve recently discovered most women experience: What am I doing with my life? At the time I was bouncing between freelance writing gigs while anxiously watching my income…

The Benefits Beyond Salary You Can — And Should — Negotiate For When You Get A New Job

You did it: You brushed up you resume, wrote a killer cover letter, and crushed your interviews — and now, you’ve got at least one job offer (maybe more!) on the table. What now? Before you take on a new position, it’s always worth considering what…

We Asked 283 Millennial Women About Work-Life Balance & Here’s What They Said

Maintaining an actual work-life balance can be, in a word, difficult. Between demanding bosses, being devoted to your work, obligations to family and friends, and the need to take care of yourself, work and life can often get in the way of each…

Having No Work-Life Balance Made Me Sick. Here’s How I Changed Things For The Better

When I was young, I used to think that the concept of a good "work-life balance" was for old people. Only people with ordinary lives — a nine-to-five job, a savings account, etc. — could obsess over such ordinary things, right? As aspiring writer, I…

"Hustle Culture" May Be Toxic For Women, But Here's Why We Still Can't Get Enough

Here are a few of the things I know about the day-to-day lives of successful women: they wake up every day with the sun (and remember, alarms are for underachievers!). Then they meditate before work. And then they answer emails before work. And then…

Doing The Most

What “work-life balance” means for women today, when the definition of “work” has become so broad that “life” has become all the more complicated for it.