It is probably true for most people that all work and no play makes for one dreary existence. I am an extreme advocate of work/life balance for everyone. This is as important for people without children as it is for people with children. What I’m not prone to state, however, is what YOUR work/life balance should look like.

There was a time when I worked all hours of the day and night. It wasn’t that I wanted to work those hours it was that I needed to work those hours in order to provide for myself and my children. I was brand new at being a single mom and I was also quite significantly under-employed. Times were tough and in order to juggle it all I had to stay up very late at night and get up very early in the morning. Was it ideal? No because quite frankly I prefer my sleep hours to be roughly 8 hours long. But working those long hours helped me balance the rest of my life financially. It had to be done to feed the kids and keep the roof over our heads. I accepted my life as balanced at that point because it had to be done.

One of the downsides to that period of my life was that I worked from home a lot and oftentimes felt very secluded from the rest of the world. I had zero social life and no money to fund one anyways. I worked crazy hours so I could care for the kids during the day. Days would pass and I would realize that I hadn’t gone any further than the mailbox for the better part of the week. A trip to the grocery store seemed like an exciting social opportunity.

When times turned and I found myself in an office space again I was so over-joyed at being in the presence of other people that actual socializing was hardly necessary. The fact that I could HEAR someone over the age of 2 talking in the background made my heart soar.

Just being there was all I really needed.

But all around me I was hearing sounds that went beyond typical water cooler chatter. I was hearing people playing catch in their work space (football anyone?). I could hear bursts of laughter, gentle ribbing and non-work related banter.

Now I’ll confess that this was not anything entirely new to me but it was something I had gone a period of time without. It got me to thinking about how much time could potentially be lost in a work day to this type of banter.

Obviously, the potential to abuse fun time in the office is there but personally I feel like this type of chit chat is actually good for the environment. If I managed a space that didn’t have this type of banter, I think I would be seriously concerned about the happiness of my staff.

I think when work environments have an atmosphere that is fun and upbeat it creates a great moral among the workers. Tossing around a football in a common workspace is an excellent team builder.

CNN apparently agrees with me. You can read their thoughts over here at the article appropriately named:

Worker chatter is good for business

I think that just like work/life balance, how much chatter is too much is an individual decision that people need to make for themselves. That said I also think that if your work is suffering because you are screwing around, you should probably take a minute or two to review your priorities. I keep this cartoon posted at my office door. I posted it there specifically for my manager (which he knows and comments on every time he comes by). There will come a day when he will stop by my desk and there will be much screwing around taking place. Oh hell. Who am I kidding. He’s already seen that day (only once or twice, that’s it. I swear.)

But now I’m curious about your thoughts on when office chit chat has gone too far. What do you define as too much?