By Dr Bhavani Krishna Iyer || The Sun
Work-life balance is a necessity, not a trend, as chronic stress and overwork threaten health and relationships
THE year 2025 was marked by farewells. I lost relatives, friends and colleagues far too soon, their absences leaving a silent question hanging in the air. What makes a life’s end feel “acceptable”?
My boss’s death from lung cancer at 81 was met, in some quiet corners, with that very term. He was a consummate workaholic, for whom passion and profession were indistinguishable.
He lived, intensely, on his own terms. Yet, his passing stresses a pervasive modern contradiction that we glorify immersive dedication while preaching an elusive ideal called “work-life balance.”
This phrase saturates corporate culture, a mandatory mantra in wellness seminars and LinkedIn posts. We are told that “making time for life” is the secret to longevity and happiness.
But for the average professional, this isn’t a goal, it’s a mathematical impossibility. Consider a standard day that start at 8.30am, leave by 6.00pm, commute home by 7.00pm. In the few hours before a forced bedtime, one must cram dinner, chores and the profound emotional labour of family.
Where, in this frantic equation, does “balance” reside?
It has become a personal burden disguised as a corporate benefit. Employees are instructed to “manage time better” or “prioritise self-care,” a clever shifting of systemic failure onto individual shoulders.
True balance is not about fleeing the office to squeeze in a rushed jog. It demands a fundamental re-evaluation of how we value human time itself.
We hear loud calls for well-being, yet see no corresponding initiative to prevent the 40-plus-hour workweek from consuming the human spirit whole. This “hype” creates a facade of progress over unchanged, rigid demands.
The science behind this imbalance is stark and terrifying. We are in the midst of a biological crisis masquerading as a career choice.
The sedentary, stressful nature of the modern workday is a direct precursor to chronic disease. Research from the World Health Organisation is obvious, individuals working over 55 hours weekly face a 33% increased risk of stroke and a 13% higher risk of fatal heart disease.
When work bleeds endlessly into life, the body remains in a state of “high alert”, with cortisol levels permanently elevated. This chronic stress doesn’t just cause fatigue, it actively suppresses immunity, raises blood pressure, and disrupts metabolism.
Work-life balance, therefore, is not a luxury. It is the essential period where the body’s parasympathetic nervous system takes over, enabling repair and healing.
Our current “always-on” culture, fuelled by evening emails and digital leashes, keeps us in a state of low-grade emergency for 16 hours a day, sabotaging this critical process.
The mental and emotional erosion is equally severe. The inability to disconnect leads to “cognitive tunnelling”, where the brain, obsessed with work and scarcity, loses its capacity for creative thought and empathy.
Studies in occupational health psychology identify “psychological detachment” as the single most critical factor in preventing burnout.
Without it, we don’t just return home tired, we return emotionally bankrupt. We are physically present with loved ones but mentally detailing the day’s unresolved conflicts, eroding our closest relationships through a fog of distraction and irritability.
Corporate solutions remain profoundly hypocritical. “Wellness Wednesdays” and free meditation apps are mere band-aids on a gaping wound. A company that provides a yoga room but expects answers to emails at 9.00pm is not supporting balance – it is plain farce.
Authentic change requires structural overhaul. We must look to models like Europe’s “Right to Disconnect” laws, which legally protect personal time. We need a shift to results-based assessment instead of clock-watching, and a serious exploration of a four-day workweek, acknowledging that our digital productivity has rendered the five-day model archaic.
The crisis is compounded by the “second shift”, the domestic labour that still falls disproportionately on women, and by the paradoxical trap of remote work.
While eliminating the commute, it has also dissolved the physical boundary between office and home. The kitchen table becomes a permanent desk, and the laptop never closes.
The expectation has morphed into 24/7 availability precisely because “you’re already home”, proving that without cultural change, technology only tightens the chain.
We must stop framing balance as a trendy lifestyle choice. It is a non-negotiable requirement for a functional society and healthy individuals. A life partitioned solely into work, commute, chores and sleep is not living, it is mere subsistence as a biological component in an economic machine.
The conversation has started. The hype has raised awareness. But awareness without structural change is just noise. It is time for the corporate world to move beyond hollow rhetoric and recognise that a rested, healthy and connected employee is not a distracted liability, but a sustainable asset.
Until we stop measuring a person’s worth by hours logged and start valuing the quality of their human experience, work-life balance will remain a beautiful, cruel mirage.
Dr Bhavani Krishna Iyer holds a doctorate in English literature. Her professional background encompasses teaching, journalism and public relations. She is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in counselling. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
Source: how-workaholism-is-costing-our-lives
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