The myth of balance

Some thoughts on work and meaning sparked by a recent painting session.

Balance is a myth. If you’re chasing a goal worth achieving, you’ve got to be all in. To quote Alain de Botton:

“Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”

If you’re chasing a promotion at work, you’ve got to go above and beyond to deliver value.

If you’re building up a business, you’re probably going to be working on it at all hours.

Same thing if you’re writing a book, creating art, heck even raising a family — there’s no balance with little kids and “me time” is scarce at best.

And yet the myth of balance shimmers like a mirage.

There may be periods of your life where some sort of balance is possible. Times when things just flow evenly and you feel equal parts rested and engaged. Such times may last for a few days, or a few months, or even a few years. But then a new path will beckon, and your life will be unbalanced once again.

I think the key is to examine what is causing the unbalance.

Is it meaningful work? A goal worth pursuing?

Those are good things! Let things be unbalanced for as long as it takes to achieve them, but try to find some pockets for rest, for downtime.

Or is it performative productivity? A toxic job? Constant exhaustion caused by all the things on your plate?

Then it may be worth taking the time to see if you can drop some balls, talk to your manager to cut down your work hours or perhaps even look for a different job.

Rather than searching for some sort of mythical balance, I think we should be searching instead for meaning — for the things that matter, that light us up, and that are important to us and, as far as possible, fill our days with as any many of those things as we can. When we do this, we can more easily let go of any notions of balance, because most of what we are doing is meaningful and important to us.

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When it comes to my own life, I feel like I got a bit too enamored with the whole work-life balance and rest is revolution narrative.

Yes, rest is important.

Yes, hustle culture is harmful.

But, there is such a thing as too much rest.

Let me explain.

I have a rather stressful full-time job, and I have very good boundaries between my work and personal life. Which means that the evenings and weekends and any time off work are mine to do with as I please.

I also have a rather big goal that I am working towards. Some aspects of working on that goal look like “work” — a lot of work, in fact.

And I’ve found myself being rather reluctant to do that work in my personal time. It was for leisure, you see. I didn’t want to be on the laptop during my time off from work. The blasphemy!

Which means that I haven’t been able to devote the kind of effort that I need to, if I want to achieve this particular goal of mine.

As you can undoubtedly tell, this isn’t a pleasant scenario.

Yes, my work can be super stressful, and yes, I do need to rest.

ButAndAlso, I have some nice chunks of time when I can work on this big goal of mine — one that is meaningful and important to me.

And until I was painting this piece, and had the sudden realization of balance being a rather mythical thing, I was unwilling to give up even a moment of my leisure time.

But guess what? I had a chunk of time off work this week. And I spent the majority of it working on this goal. And instead of feeling draining, it felt rather energizing!

Which begs the question:

Is it work that stresses us out, or not filling our days with more meaningful work that does us in?

I’d love to hear your thoughts here in the comments, or simply reply to this e-mail and let’s get the conversation rolling!

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