Let's Replace Work-Life Balance With Work-Rest Rhythm

We keep optimising our time but forget to replenish ourselves.

- Anthea Ong

Work-life balance. It's the phrase that won't go away. We've tried to make it more palatable—calling it "work-life harmony" or "work-life integration." But the framing remains unchanged: work on one side, life on the other, and the self somewhere in the tug of war.

Work-life balance is now the top priority for job seekers in Singapore across Gen Z, millennials and Gen X, according to the latest Randstad Workmonitor Survey 2025. It's a timely and telling signal: People of all ages are exhausted, and they want their lives back.

But we're still asking the wrong question and reinforcing an unhelpful outmoded frame. What if the deeper issue isn't balance, but rest? Not rest as luxury or laziness. But rest as a fundamental rhythm that allows both life and work to thrive and that enables us to feel like whole human beings, not just productive ones.

It's time to reframe the conversation—not "work-life balance," but work-rest rhythm. Because we're not being undone by work alone; we're being undone by a culture that doesn't know how to rest.

THE FALSE BINARY: WORK V LIFE

The term "work-life balance" assumes that work and life are separate, even opposing, forces. This framing will always make "work" the villain—the thing we must control or minimize to have a "life."

The implication? That life begins when work ends, and that every hour spent working is an hour stolen from living. The result is a perpetual zero-sum game, laden with a constant sense of guilt or failure.

There's also a twist—many of us are burning out, not just from work that we get paid for, but working at life, too. Social obligations, caregiving responsibilities, parenting, side hustles, community involvement, even the quiet striving of self-improvement—these can deplete us as much as any job.