IELTS Plus: Episode 80 - Work-Life Balance

Welcome to the final episode of season two of the IELTS plus English podcast where today we're going to talk about work-life balance. Now, I'm making a big deal about this being the final episode, of course, but this isn't the final episode forever. You know, I'm not wrapping up the entire project. I am just saying that season two...

It's coming to an end. I do have lots of plans after that. And next week, I'm going to do an extra episode just to explain some of my thoughts and ask you a few questions. So there will be an extra episode next week to talk about that. But for this week, we are going to do the final episode, Work-Life Balance. Now, starting off...

We've got some lovely language today, as I always say, and there's some really nice stuff here. It's not too hard. Workaholic. Sabbatical. That's a popular concept nowadays, sabbatical. downtime, overtime. So really great words related to work-life balance. I hope you are finding your work-life balance. And that's, of course, available in the ALTS plus Total Speaking textbook.

which is 80 topics in there which follows everything from the past few years. So you can go back over 80 episodes and follow it and learn language, answer the questions. Lots to do in there. And that's available on www.britplus.net. I'm not going to give you any extra tips today. It's the final episode of the season. So my concept is going to be super clean structures. That's what I'm going for.

You are going to hear me today. This is not scripted, of course. It never is. But you're going to hear me go through part one, part two, part three as cleanly as I can. showing you the structures that are in my textbook and trying to keep to the time guidelines that I told you about in, was it episode 78 time? So... That's what we're going to do today. And I'll give you a student question, your final one of the season. Today's student question is, do you think you have a good work-life balance?

Now, this is an important one because, of course, this is a yes-no answer, right? It's a yes-no question. If I ask you that question, the answer is either yes or no. But what I'd like from you is to make sure you say yes or no. and then give a nice detail. That's up to you. So do you think you have a good work-life balance? That's your question for today. And that is my first question. So let's do it.

Do you think you have a good work-life balance? I do nowadays, certainly. I think so. I've really taken control of my workload here. with my online and offline business. And I've set a very clear boundary between... work and life, my life outside of work. So overall, I'm very happy with my work-life balance. Did you hear that? Very clean. No mumbling, no extra. That's what I'm going for today. What activities help you relax after a long day at work? Well, the gym comes to mind.

It's not necessarily after a long day at work, but during the workday, I like to go to the gym maybe three or four times a week. And I find that weight training is very invigorating. I also love at the weekends to go hiking because just being out in nature, walking among the trees and in the mountains helps me recharge.

Excellent. What a clean start. Let's go to our part two. Now, part two today, I'm just preparing two minutes, is describe a time when you struggled to achieve work-life balance. Okay, now, let me see. We did the episode, it rings a bell, this. Ah, we did stress about four or five weeks ago. And I talked about probably this. It was work-life balance and managing stress. So I will try to talk about a bit of a different case this time. So let's give it a go.

Two minutes on the clock. My time starts now. I'd like to tell you about when I first opened my business. I opened my business... as as an office and as a proper business in 2016 and at that time i was really desperate to to make it grow and to create something good and to have more and more students. It was a desperation, definitely. And to the point that... I worked every single day, including Sundays, and it was really, really unhealthy. I was doing a really bad job of juggling the work.

the lessons, creating lessons, and then having downtime, you know, spending time at home, spending time with my wife and friends. So it was really unbalanced at that time. So let me tell you a little more about this time. I would go to work every single day around 6.30 and I would get home at... 10pm sometimes. I remember I accepted a student who wanted 9pm lessons, which means I would get home at 10.45pm. And it just spiralled out of control.

I, as I said, I had no downtime. I don't think I was ever a workaholic, but I just had a desperation to fill my schedule and to make money. For me personally, I think although that this was a very hard time and I got sick sometimes, it was a good opportunity to push my limits and to see how to do it. badly, how to manage my schedule poorly so that now I have that perspective and I have a good healthy balance. There you go. Okay.

Pretty good. I'm fairly happy with that. You know, nice diversity and tensors. I've got some of the language in there. So that's it. I will go straight on to part three. I thought that was okay. Now here's where I really want to demonstrate. clean answers. Part three, and by the way, it's okay. You don't need to be super clean yourself. I just want to show you strategy, my strategy.

And part three, we sometimes have a tendency to sort of say too much, go down a rabbit hole of some topic that's not quite connected. I sometimes do it as well. Let's stay really on topic and clean. My first question is, what are the main reasons people struggle to achieve a good work-life balance? I would say... The main reason people struggle to keep a work-life balance is doing too much overtime. As soon as you start to accept overtime, it...

It can feel manageable, but it starts to eat into the free time that you should be spending at home. And that can affect the way you eat, how much you exercise, how much time you spend with friends and family. So it has all of these knock-on effects that are detrimental to your health. In Korea...

There is a real culture of working overtime and there's a lot of pressure that comes from companies. One of the most notorious companies for that is Samsung, where there's a real expectation that you work. beyond your your stated work hours and nowadays a lot of people especially at the executive level have to come in at the weekend so it's a great example of you know, the boundaries and overstepping the boundaries of life. Excellent. Okay, you heard there. I introduced...

My answer, who's the main answer, I gave detail. I gave a specific example, which was Samsung. And then I did a little conclusion at the end. That's what I want. Next one. Do you think work life balance is more important now than it was in the past? No, I wouldn't say so. I think that it's always been important. I suppose it depends which country you're in, but from what I have observed, there was more of a tendency to work in the past, whereas now...

It's not more important, but there's more of a trend towards taking care of work-life balance. This, I believe, has come a lot from social media. You can see nowadays on Instagram and various platforms TikTok where people are showing their life. lifestyle and and the things that they do outside of work and i think that when you see that on social media you have more of a desire to get the balance right

Good. Wow, this is going great. I'm happy. Let's do the last question and the last question of the season. How can individuals take responsibility for maintaining their own work-life balance? There are so many ways that you can take care of your work-life balance, but the most extreme one that I find interesting, I've never done it, but it's a sabbatical. Now, of course, this is a fairly temporary measure, but if you are really overworked, overwhelmed, stressed...

Or maybe you just want to explore new areas of life. You can take a sabbatical. It could be a month. It could be six months. It could be a year. Depending on your company, this can be... paid semi-paid or unpaid and maybe they'll just hold your position but if you're lucky enough to get this opportunity i think that's a great way of experiencing life fully for an extended period in korea it's

quite rare but in the UK you do hear it happen and my sister was an example she took a I think it was a six-month sabbatical to travel Asia and she had a wonderful time lots of experiences

and felt fully recharged at the end of it. Well, what a clean episode. I'm really happy about that. I hope that that came across to you. Maybe it's quite a normal episode. That is the last one. So all I will say for now, because there's one more, I'm going to do another episode next week to wrap things up. But what I will say is if you did make it to here. Thank you so much. Thank you to everyone who comments. I do notice you. I noticed similar people popping up.

Sometimes I just get very nice comments in YouTube or on Spotify and I appreciate it so much. So to all of the listeners, thank you. I hope you enjoyed season two. And... More broadly, all 80 episodes which follow the textbook. And this is not the end. That's the important point. It is not the end. I do have plans and I will be back. So anyway, I will see you next week. Don't go anywhere because I've got a few announcements.

So have a nice week. As I always say, study super hard. It is not over. And I'll see you next Monday to just share a few thoughts. See you then.