Every day you hear more news about people losing their jobs, getting pay cuts, their bonuses dropped, or other benefits downgraded. It is unfortunate and undoubtedly taxing on people’s happiness and satisfaction with their life. When monetary benefits are scarce people look to other types of compensation and rewards to help maintain satisfaction and keep your best talent around.

For myself, I know that what I value in a job is generally the same in every case whether it is my current position or if I am looking at new jobs. One of the most important things to me, and I would assume others, is my work/life balance. This becomes increasingly important if monetary compensation for hard work is limited. Following a post from a fellow STL blogger SusanIsk, I calculated my work/life balance ratio on CNN’s Work/Life balance calculator to see where I fall in the spectrum. **One note though, I combined the work that I do for my day job as well as the entrepreneurial things that I do on my own week to week.

Work/Life Balance Chart

The results from my chart - I need to get more sleep. As you can see from the picture, it is pretty much what I expected. I work a lot, don’t get enough sleep, and I spend too much time commuting to work. Now depending on my satisfaction with the work that I do, all of that may not be a problem. But for those of you who are looking for a reality check on how you spend your life’s hours day by day, check out the calculator…see where you net out.

If your results point to an area where you want to make improvement or change, do it if you can. It will help highlight what areas in your work or life that you can tweak in order to make yourself happier day in and day out.