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Earlier this month, the Sloan Network surveyed its readers regarding their preferred way of describing the concept of efforts to manage work and life. While ‘work-life balance’ has proven to be the favorite terminology, with 46% of voters opting for it, ‘work-life integration’ was second in line, with 25% of voters choosing it. ‘Work-life juggle’ came in third, with 8% of the vote.

It is interesting to see the results, as there has been a lot of buzz lately about how ‘work-family balance,’ in particular, is an outdated or inappropriate term. Three proponents for new terms are below:

• Parenting expert and author Jodie Benvenista has tossed out the term ‘balance’ because it “suggests that people have a fixed and limited amount of time and energy. If work is taking all that time and energy, then family suffers, or vice versa.” Instead, Jodie has coined the term work family flow, believing ‘flow’ to better illustrate that work and family are interconnected and interrelated, and that the goal is about optimizing both work and family.

• Cali Williams Yost, work-life flexibility expert, advocates discarding the old ‘balance’ language, too, as “[s]omehow the term evolved into a deficit model, or the goal we all never seem to achieve. . . It’s a static word for a dynamic process with an outcome that shifts along with everyone’s unique work and personal circumstances.” Instead, Cali has adopted the term ‘work-life fit’, language that “describes the process of looking at our unique realities as they are today, and of creating the combination of work and life that supports that reality.” (Interestingly, ‘work-life fit’ garnered 6% of the vote in our recent poll).

• Paul Nyhan, family reporter at the Seattle Post Intelligencer, calls ‘work-family balance’ “a crock, an impossible goal that relies on a word, balance, which is impossible to achieve when raising young children.” Instead, he advocates for “work-family rhythm, with inevitable spikes and lulls, but a steady beat most of the time.”

Do you have any ideas on new work-life language to add to this growing list? Does the language matter to you?

• Research , Workplace