Work–life balance

Listen to a radio interview about maintaining a good work–life balance to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Presenter: Good morning, everyone. On today's show, we've got Chris Svensson with us, the author of No more nine to five, the new best-selling book about work–life balance in the current working world. Good morning, Chris. Thanks for coming.

Chris: Thanks for having me, Anna.

Presenter: So, Chris, tell us about your book and how the concept of a work–life balance has been changing?

Chris: Well, in the more traditional workplaces, people's working lives and their private lives are, or were, clearly divided. People often work from nine in the morning until five or six in the evening. People sometimes stay late in the office and work in the evenings. This is called working overtime.

Presenter: OK, and what else?

Chris: Well, in these environments it isn't common for people to work at the weekend or while they're on holiday. They can clearly separate their working lives and their private lives. And the evenings, weekends and holidays are free to focus on non-work areas of life, such as hobbies, interests, sports, spending time with the family and friends, and so on. It's important and healthy not to spend all your time just working, right?

Presenter: Right! So what has changed? How are things different now?

Chris: Well, for a start, most people can now access their work emails from their mobile phones. So they are more likely to quickly reply to an important mail in the evening or at the weekend. The same goes for laptops. It's easier to access your work in the evenings from home or even from your hotel when you're on holiday.

Presenter: That doesn't sound like much of a work–life balance. It sounds like all work.

Chris: Exactly, but this new mobility brings a lot of advantages with it. More people are now able to work flexibly, so if they need to leave the office early one afternoon to be with their family, they can catch up on work that evening from home or somewhere else.

Presenter: That sounds good. So, what you're saying is that although traditional divisions between work and life are fading, many employees now have more freedom to do their work from different locations and at different times.

Chris: Yes, that's it.

Task 1

Exercise

Task 2

Exercise

Discussion

How do you manage your work–life balance?

Download

Worksheet92.63 KB

Try another listening

Language level

B1 Intermediate

Do you need to improve your English listening skills?

Join thousands of learners from around the world who are improving their English listening skills with our online courses.

Find out more

As I am a student sometimes it’s difficult. I try to manage my Study- life balance but sometimes it isn’t as easy as I would like. Nowadays it’s quite better cause I have class through my computer and I have more time in my schedule.

I like to work very much, I love my profession, but I like to practice sports too, so I try always to have a work-life balance, I prefer to work in the morning and work out in the evenings, but I like to change my routine sometimes, in this way, some weeks I work out early in the morning and go to work later and work until before 4:00 or 3:00 pm.

good conversation

I depend on the traditional way in my work-life balance. We work for fixed hours from 7 am to 3 pm or from 3 pm to 11 pm or from 11 pm to 7 am. We have only one day off duty. This is only our weekend. We can use it to play sports, cook, sleep or go shopping. We cannot be flexible in our work hours. We can not use the recent way as to work from home. We are nurses. So our work life and private life are completely separated.

It's really interesting to hear you say something about work in your country. In my country, Vietnam, with traditional works they work likely the essay. Nowadays, with high technology they can work flexible more than before only for people work in the office. However, government workers have two days off, but employees depend on their company. We usually celebrate small party on the weekend for cooking, playing games, singing karaoke together. I think work balance is extremely important for everybody, we should keep in balance. Even though, we have to work hard for expensive life. If we don't do that we can't live longer.

The best line this morning.. I noticed that the last year 2020 went by very quickly. I hope that expectations change.

It’s more easy now to manage my work-life balance since I work in smart working. I can practice home fitness in the morning before I start my work. I can do my daily tasks with flexibility. For example, when I have to go for a medical examination, I take agreements with my manager and I can catch up my work in other hours. The risk is to work more than your working time, because you don’t check the clock, above all when you are very involved in your job. It’s also important to give clear limits to your boss when he/she takes advantage of your availability, in this case it’s necessary to defend the right to disconnection

I usually manage work life balance by spending 7 hours on work from 8 to 3 pm . Then I usually play cricket or football to fresh my mind and to stay healthy .

I try not to mix work and private life. If something annoying happens during my time at work, I try to fix it at that moment in order to not to think about it later in my private life. Out of work, I like to be focused on enjoying with my friends and my couple, leaving work matters behind. Cheers from Madrid.

This work mode isn`t such comfortable as the interwee tells. It`s awful, because your boss can abuse a possibility to work during your holidays and weekends, and all your life will be pointed around your job and responsibilities.