In April 1933, a couple was driving past Loch Ness when they saw an enormous animal crossing the road and disappearing into the water. They described the creature as something akin to a "dragon or prehistoric monster". A string of sightings ensued that year, all of which included mentions of the wake that the monster left in the water, which was noteworthy in an otherwise calm loch with no boats to be seen.

Subsequently, many people attempted to find evidence of the existence of the Loch Ness monster - soon named Nessie. Photographs were captured (or faked, as the famous "Surgeon's Photograph" was), and sonar explorations were undertaken. There was even a theory that Nessie was a plesiosaur, an ancient, carnivorous marine reptile that went extinct around 65.5 million years ago.

Nothing has ever incontrovertibly pointed to Nessie's existence. Yet many people believe - or want to believe - in the Loch Ness Monster.

Returning to the year 2022, we have a similarly elusive creature that some have claimed to have seen and conquered - work-life balance. The comparison may seem strange at first but bear with me. Both of these exist as ideas in the popular imagination, and they are both evasive and unlikely. Sure, finding work-life balance doesn't sound half as exciting as finding an ancient reptile in a Scottish loch, but in our always-on culture and the throes of busy season for accounting professionals, work life balance is something everyone wants to find.

While there are countless articles and books dedicated to work-life balance and time management, and there's some kind of "hack" for just about everything these days, I remain skeptical about the existence of true balance.

How many people do you know who appear to have the gist of work-life balance? There's always a compromise somewhere. Even amazing Angela who balances work with motherhood and somehow manages to squeeze in time at the gym is struggling somewhere. I mean, when was the last time she had a full night's sleep?

I constantly find myself making trade-offs between different, equally important things in my life, no matter how many hours I've spent creating to-do lists or schedules. And besides, when you spend 40 hours a week - or more - at work, how can that possibly "balance" out with the rest of your time?

But don't worry. There is a way for us to feel happier and less overwhelmed in the busiest seasons of our lives; it just doesn't look like perfect equilibrium.

The alternative I'd like to consider is work-life harmony. While balance suggests symmetry, harmony entails the forming of "a pleasing or consistent whole" - a more holistic approach. Work-life harmony is similar in principle to work-life integration, which focuses on the ways in which work functions as a component of life rather than as a separate category. As Life Coach Kate McCready says:

"How can we tune the notes of work and life to make them sing together? What new notes can we introduce or remove to make the sound more pleasing?"

While achieving a perfect balance between work, personal time, and relationships may be as difficult as finding the Loch Ness Monster, finding something in between is certainly doable.

Changing the tone of your daily life from the discordant one of stress to something more melodious necessitates only a few conscious adjustments to the ways in which you spend your time and, perhaps more importantly, the ways in which you think of time.

In our frantic, bustling modern world, we often think of time as a commodity, a resource to be used - which can, therefore, be used up. But time isn't really something you can have or hold.

The only way in which you could be said to "run out of time" is by dying. This single limitation leads you to worry that you aren't spending your time right, that you are wasting hours or days or years on things that aren't important. Hence the preoccupation with balancing the taxing tasks of work with the fulfilling pleasures of family, friends, and hobbies.

But time can never truly be "yours". It's not something you can control. Because no one knows when they will die. And how can you balance your life if you don't know how much of it you'll have?

This is why I think we are looking at it all wrong. In a world in which no one can have full control over time, it makes more sense to work on the small things that will make your life feel better and more harmonious as a whole.

One of the ways you can make a difference in your life and the way in which it's spent is by dedicating yourself to your health. To stay on top of your health during the busy season, the season in which you're typically composed of blood, sweat, and caffeine, it's important to focus on both your mental and physical health. This means things as simple as:

As we've come to see, prioritizing and valuing rest is key to being a productive and effective worker. Moreover, taking short breaks between different tasks during the day can boost your performance and improve your mental health.

Even though stress is inevitable, your life doesn't have to be consumed by it. Here are 5 top tips to achieve work-life harmony during the busy season and beyond.

This may as well be the Millennials' mantra. Often mistaken for entitled, Millennials are known to take their free time seriously and to expect that work will not fill their whole lives. But let's move away from the notion of entitlement and consider what's behind this mentality. Isn't it possible that you could be getting just as much done in less time? And if so, why not do just that?

A pilot program in the UK has been in the spotlight recently for its trial of a 4-day work week, suggesting that it may be possible to be just as productive in 4 days as you typically are in 5. And most people would be willing to admit - even if only to themselves - that they are not 100% productive every second of every day at work. The solution is to work smarter, not harder. To do this entails:

Working smarter in the time that you have available, rather than working harder - and for longer - means that you will be more productive and get to take more breaks, giving you the time to rest and recover.

The next thing you can do is get rid of the clutter. This means:

With a more minimalist approach to your environment and behavior, there is less around to overwhelm you. And it's far easier to focus on what you need to do.

Take the time to let your team know about your commitments and priorities so that you can have a healthy boundary between work time and personal time.

Don't say "yes" to everything immediately. If you don't set boundaries, you will constantly be bombarded with extra tasks to complete and you run the risk of opportunists taking advantage of your good nature and great work ethic.

And remember that time away from work - be that to read a book in the evenings or take a weekend away with the family - is just as important to your productivity as the time spent at work.

The world is full of distractions, from emails to advertisements to the latest post on social media. There's a whole host of things all around you - both physically and virtually - that can consume your attention when you should be working.

To tackle this, you need to figure out what's throwing you off. What are you wasting time on? For me, it's often emails - things that I like to pretend I need to read straight away when, really, I could just set aside half an hour at the slow part of the afternoon to go through all of them. How urgent is an email anyway?

One of the first things to fall to the wayside when you're stressed is healthy home-cooked meals, but just because you can't fit cooking in between everything else doesn't mean you should live off take-out.

Making time for a nutritious meal between tasks is achievable, even if this means subscribing to a meal plan and having ingredients or whole meals delivered to you. And if you are ordering takeaways, you can always try to go for the more balanced meal option so that you are getting in all the nutrients your body needs.

Similarly, setting aside time for exercise is another way that you can focus on nourishing your body. With frequent exercise, you will sleep better, have more energy, and you'll have a great stress reliever to boot.

That said, there will never be perfect symmetry between work and everything else. But that's okay.

All of these tips are intended to enrich your life so that its different components work harmoniously together. It may sound like you're being short-changed when I say you can't ever have a perfect balance, but perhaps balance isn't what you'd like after all. As one article for Time puts it:

"Balance is about stasis: if our lives were ever in balance - parents happy, kids taken care of, work working — then our overriding thought would be to shout “Nobody move!” and pray all would stay perfect forever."

Balance is a tricky thing to maintain - impossible to maintain really. But if balance means everything staying the same, is that really something you'd like to have?

Most poignantly, the article continues, "the challenge, we are told, is to balance the heaviness of work with the lightness of life". However, as one of my favorite books, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, points out, lightness is paradoxically associated with both freedom from burden and insignificance. Likewise, heaviness is associated both with burden and meaning. The things that are meaningful are often also difficult, and the things that are easy are often also meaningless. Just because something is "light" doesn't mean it's better.

And while we may strive for perfection, a precise equilibrium in all things that matter to us, Kundera puts it best when he says, "There is no perfection, only life." If you want life to be less stressful and more fulfilling, it's about finding a sense of harmony, not balance.