Hi, I'm Helen Tupper and I'm Sarah Ellis and this is the squiggly careers podcast where each week we come together to discuss a different topic to do with work which we hope will help you because it definitely helps us navigate all of the ups and downs of our jobs today and feel that little bit more confident and in control of our squiggly careers.

And this week we're going to be talking about work-life fit, which is our way of describing

what's usually called work-life balance. I think we both find that idea that there's this

perfect balance that we could all achieve, just this like aspiration that's irritatingly out

of reach. And so fit just feels just that little bit more realistic for our lives anyway.

And before we get started on the topic, if you don't already know, we create lots of things to

support your learning around this podcast. So we've got our podsheet summaries. You can download

those and reflect on

some of the coach yourself questions and the ideas for action. We've also got our pod plus learning

community. So if you want to be part of a conversation about this topic, you can join us there.

And all the details for that and things like our pod notes and pod mails, there's so much stuff.

It's all in the show notes,

so you can sign up and access it all there. And so just thinking for a second about why we don't

want to use work-life balance, because it is still a phrase that I think is used really commonly.

I'll still see it popping up all the time on articles. I think it's a very common interview

question, though I would say particularly for women. I'm not

sure that question is asked as much of men, though no reason why it shouldn't be. So I think it's one of

those words and those phrases where it's really helpful if we reset our starting point. And I think as

soon as you have balance in mind and we know that the words that we use frame how we see the world, balance does imply that you're like on a balanced beam.

Somehow you're managed to like making it all work all at the same time and everything's all perfect.

And it's almost like that starting point sets us all up to fail.

And when I talk to people

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