Breakdown of Sulit menjaga hidup seimbang kalau kita menunda-nunda semua tugas penting.
Questions & Answers about Sulit menjaga hidup seimbang kalau kita menunda-nunda semua tugas penting.
In Indonesian, adjectives like sulit (difficult) can function as a full predicate on their own, without a linking verb like to be.
- Sulit menjaga hidup seimbang... literally: Difficult to keep life balanced...
- English needs It is difficult..., but Indonesian does not need itu or a verb like adalah here.
- You could say Memang sulit untuk menjaga hidup seimbang..., but the simple Sulit menjaga... is very natural and common.
Both sulit and susah mean difficult and are often interchangeable.
- sulit = a bit more neutral, can sound slightly more formal.
- susah = also difficult, but often feels more casual/colloquial and can also mean troublesome.
You could say:
- Susah menjaga hidup seimbang kalau kita menunda-nunda semua tugas penting.
This is fine in everyday speech. In writing or a slightly more formal tone, sulit is usually preferred.
Menjaga comes from jaga (to guard, to look after) with the prefix me-.
In this sentence, menjaga hidup seimbang means to maintain / look after / keep (your) life balanced.
Nuances:
- menjaga hidup seimbang – to keep your life balanced, to take care that it stays balanced.
- mengatur hidup – to organize/arrange your life.
- mempertahankan hidup seimbang – to defend/maintain a balanced life (sounds more formal and heavier).
Menjaga is natural because it suggests ongoing care and attention, not just planning or organizing.
In Indonesian, adjectives usually come after the noun.
- hidup seimbang = balanced life
- hidup = life
- seimbang = balanced
- tugas penting = important tasks
- tugas = tasks
- penting = important
So: noun + adjective is the standard pattern.
Seimbang hidup would be wrong in this context.
Both relate to life, but they’re used a bit differently:
- hidup
- as a noun: life (often more concrete or personal: your life, daily life)
- as a verb/adjective: to live / alive
- kehidupan
- a noun formed with ke- -an: life, existence, lifestyle; often more abstract or formal.
In this sentence:
- hidup seimbang = a balanced life (natural, everyday expression).
- kehidupan yang seimbang = a balanced life (more formal/abstract; adding yang makes it sound more written/structured).
You could say:
- Sulit menjaga kehidupan yang seimbang kalau...
It’s correct, just a bit more formal. The original with hidup seimbang feels more conversational.
They are related but not identical:
- kalau
- very common in speech
- can mean if or when (in general)
- neutral, widely used in everyday Indonesian.
- jika
- more formal, often used in writing, instructions, or formal speech
- usually means if (conditional).
- ketika
- means when (at the time that), referring to a specific time point in the past/present/future, not a general condition.
In this sentence, we have a general condition (if you procrastinate, it’s hard to keep life balanced), so:
- kalau = very natural in spoken/neutral Indonesian.
- jika = a more formal alternative:
Sulit menjaga hidup seimbang jika kita menunda-nunda semua tugas penting.
Ketika would sound wrong here because it suggests a specific moment rather than a condition.
- menunda = to postpone/delay (once or in a simple sense).
- menunda-nunda = to keep postponing / to repeatedly delay / to drag it out / to procrastinate.
Reduplication (X-X) often adds a sense of:
- repetition
- intensity
- ongoing/continuous action
- sometimes carelessness or playfulness, depending on the verb.
So menunda-nunda here conveys the idea of procrastinating rather than just delaying one time.
The natural order is:
- semua (all) – a quantifier
- tugas (tasks) – noun
- penting (important) – adjective
So:
- semua tugas penting = all the important tasks
This follows: quantifier + noun + adjective.
Tugas semua penting would be ungrammatical/confusing. You could say semua tugas itu penting (all those tasks are important), but that’s a different structure (with itu and a verb implied).
Kita is the inclusive we / us in Indonesian:
- kita = we (including the listener)
- kami = we (excluding the listener)
In a general statement like this, kita is used to mean we/you/people in general – it includes the speaker and the listener together.
- Using kami would sound like: we (but not you) procrastinate, which doesn’t fit a general life lesson.
- Omitting it is also possible in some contexts, but here it would sound incomplete. You’d usually keep kita for clarity:
...kalau kita menunda-nunda semua tugas penting.
Indonesian generally does not mark tense with verb changes (no -ed, -s, etc.). Instead, it relies on:
- context
- time words, e.g. kemarin (yesterday), besok (tomorrow), sekarang (now), sering (often), etc.
This sentence expresses a general truth / habitual situation, so no explicit time is needed.
If you wanted to make time clear, you could add adverbs, for example:
- Sekarang sulit menjaga hidup seimbang... – Right now it’s hard to keep life balanced...
- Akan sulit menjaga hidup seimbang... – It will be hard to keep life balanced...
The original sentence is neutral and natural for everyday spoken and written Indonesian.
A more formal version might be:
- Sulit untuk menjaga keseimbangan hidup apabila kita menunda-nunda semua tugas penting.
Changes:
- untuk after sulit – often added in more formal style.
- keseimbangan hidup – keseimbangan (balance, abstract noun) instead of hidup seimbang.
- apabila instead of kalau – more formal than kalau, similar to jika.
All versions are correct; they just differ in formality and style.