"It's Messy...But I Feel Balanced": Unpacking Flexible Workers' Rhythm-Making Practices Using an Asset-Based Approach

2026-03-03

AI Summary

This study addresses a critical gap in existing research, which predominantly examines flexible work through productivity and organizational lenses while overlooking its entanglement with personal and caregiving responsibilities. Drawing on an asset-oriented qualitative approach, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with 20 flexible workers in Singapore to reconceptualize the blurred boundary between work and care as a set of negotiable resources. They propose “rhythm crafting” as a core practice of flexible work, revealing how individuals sustain daily rhythms through the synergistic orchestration of temporal, spatial, relational, and internal resources—specifically via temporal-spatial arrangements, relational negotiation, and self-care. This reframing offers novel theoretical insights and practical directions for human-computer interaction design aimed at supporting the integration of caregiving and work.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Activity and Plan Recognition

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Flexible work is increasingly pursued as a means of achieving work-life balance, particularly as growing caregiving responsibilities for children and aging family members shape workers' lives. Yet most HCI research has examined flexibility primarily through productivity and organizational perspectives, with less attention to how it intersects with workers' personal and family responsibilities. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative study with 20 workers in Singapore engaging in flexible arrangements to manage paid work and care responsibilities. Using an asset-based lens, we show that flexibility is not a static benefit but a continual practice of rhythm-making. Participants maintained rhythms by drawing on temporal and spatial assets, negotiated them through relational and institutional dynamics, and sustained them through intrapersonal assets such as self-care and positive reframing. Our study reframes blurred boundaries as resources rather than disruptions and offers design implications for technologies that support flexible workers' everyday rhythm-making practices.

Problem

• flexible work
• work-life balance
• care responsibilities
• rhythm-making
• HCI

Innovation

• rhythm-making
• asset-based approach
• flexible work
• work-life balance
• boundary as resource