Work Life Balance Is Not a Math Problem

Over a glass of wine among a group of professional women, leaders in their field, one president said, “I am so tired of all the talk about balance. Balance, schmalance! It’s not real.” I laughed and empathized with her.Balance has become an over-used buzzword and we’re all getting weary of this unsolved riddle.However, I don’t think it’s a topic that’s going away or should be swept under the rug. Quite the contrary. If we, as a culture, keep kidding ourselves about the value of more speed, more stuff, more working and not really assessing the costs or pausing to wonder about much of anything, we’re just going to explode. Having said that, I think many of our attempts at balance are unrealistic, unfair and ineffective.

Upon being introduced at a professional event, a business owner cocked his head and asked, “Are you one of those Executive Coaches who insists on your clients taking a full day off every week?” Smiling, I tried to explain my stance on balance not being a math problem, and how pat formulas (as great as it sounds) can’t be applied as a cookie-cutter solution for everyone.

We’ve all seen the trite tip lists in magazines that tell us to get our acts together in six easy steps and “do more in less time.” This breaks my heart. There was a time in my frenzied work life when if one more person mentioned the phrase, “work smarter” I was going to burst into tears (or perhaps lose my lunch on their shoes). Professional women are especially prone to guilt feelings about being “out of balance” so when we continue to fail after trying these spiffy tips, the only comic relief might be to call the writer and ask her if she’s meditating for 45 minutes every morning at dawn, getting in an hour of Power Yoga and editing next month’s feature while doing three loads of laundry- apparently all before breakfast. Well-intentioned time management courses out there expect us to advance-plan and adhere to perfect pie charts with 35% of our time devoted to personal priority A, 35% to work priority B, and 25% to priority C, leaving 4.998 percent for all the other unexpected inundations of life we need to cover somehow and .002% to see a movie or have a cold. Yikes.

OK, breathe and repeat after me, “Balance is not a math problem. Real life doesn’t work like perfect percentages in a pie chart. Trying to live up to this standard is almost cruel punishment to myself and people I care about. There has to be another way.” Now breathe again.

What is another way? Well, our pal Einstein said you can’t solve a problem at the level of the problem. We need to go above it, around it, underneath, to the sides… in jargon- shift the paradigm. My fervent opinion is that we do not serve ourselves well trying to treat balance simply as a time allocation concern. No matter how hard we try, it’s never really a linear issue, solvable by more effective planning, color-coded “life role” charts and Marine-like self-discipline. In fact, we are learning (in coaching real lives since 1996) we often do more harm by attempting to have a perfectly balanced day, week and month in measured time on a calendar or clock.

My heartfelt invitation to you is to abandon the math and move one letter over in the alphabet from B to C for the ultimate power shift, to “Choice.”

As long as you are at choice and are in alignment with your authentic, Best Self, feeling satisfied enough withhow you invest your energy, this is paramount to percentages, hours, minutes, and checkmarks in your planning devices.

Let me offer some examples to illustrate this stance:

Sally is opening a restaurant. Her own place– a long-held dream in the making. Sally doesn’t have time to cough twice lately; she is so consumed with major decisions and details of this new endeavor. She’s putting in 16-hour days sometimes, and it might be this way for a few months. She’s absolutely out of balance on paper. The deeper truth is, Sally is wholeheartedly investing this energy in a crazy crunch period because she’s finally pursuing her authentic passion. She’s in a state of love, not fear (and frantic racing around, without knowing why or for the sake of what). She is consciously choosing this nutty schedule – for a while. Certainly, Sally needs to remember some pacing and not let this become a permanent lifestyle that could damage her health, as well as her business. We need to view balance with a wide-angle lens, over time. Life flows in cycles. When it rains it pours. I would say to Sally, “If you know you are at choice, in alignment with your deeper Truth, and pushing yourself too hard is not a way of life that you’ll perpetuate forever, then let yourself off the hook about the math version of perfect balance. This is “balance” in wholehearted commitment for you, for now. Don’t let others sweet-talk you into feeling you should change your schedule or feel guilty. Enjoy this ride.”

Ethan has been on a busy executive track for 20 years. He’s just resigned from a job and exploring new right livelihood possibilities in coaching. After diving in with our Passion Meets Profit exploration, we both agreed that it felt right to “step away from the painting” and not overwork this process. His homework was to not do anything pragmatic about career-search and let it all go, for a full week. For Ethan’s position in his cycle of renewal, this is a wise investment of his time and energy. This is his right flavor of “balance” for now.

Judy is a successful entrepreneur, speaker, author and married mom (of one teenager). From the outside looking in, many casual observers would think she works too much and needs to chill out and slow down. While I am certainly a fan of both (chilling out and slowing down), it’s dangerous to leap to assumptions about what’s actually beneficial for Judy. As her coach, I invite her to hit the pause button and become more aware of how “at choice” she feels and how “pleased, proud and grateful” she feels about how she’s investing her time. I also encourage her to be true to her own authentic priorities and sources of fulfillment- no matter what any magazine article or anyone else might say, including her coach. Some people are indeed passionate about their life’s work. Others who can’t wait for the next vacation can’t fathom this zone and may jump to erroneous judgments or even advice on how she needs more balance. Would we have called Mozart a workaholic and told him to go to a time management seminar or a Yoga retreat?

Jessica is recently married, a new mother of twins, returning to work in a management role and just moved to the suburbs into to a house demanding some remodeling. Balance for her is very different than Sally, or even her own previous life before marriage and motherhood. Coaching with Jessica often focuses on letting go, finding things to say no to and attempting to carve out some personal soul-feeding time, without being naive about the demands of her multiple roles. Sometimes when we say balance, we really mean “peace.” That’s what she yearns for. Jessica and I talk about the return on energy investment of various activities or what actually fuels peace for her. The magic homework question for her to be with is: “Am I truly feeding my spirit and creating peace or am I feeding the to-do list monster and kidding myself that then I’ll have peace?”

With these four slices of very different lives, how could any one measure of balance be right for everyone? Clearly, one size, or one approach, does not fit all.

Author and consultant, Peter Block has said that balance isn’t about the tension between work and life. It is about what matters. Spending more time at home will not necessarily resolve the tension between “what the culture has in mind for us and what is in our own hearts. Resolution lies in becoming more balanced between engaging in what has meaning for us and doing things that are useful and practical, or in a sense, instrumental. Being fully alive is to be in balance wherever we are.“

Gandhi worked 15-hour days. They say he’d come out of long meetings looking joyfully energized, because he was so sourced by his deeper inner guidance, and so inspired by his greater cause. A friend once quipped, “Good for Gandhi- I need a nap!” :) David Whyte offers, “The antidote to exhaustion is not rest. It is wholeheartedness.” Of course, we could twist these arguments about choice, meaning and fulfillment into perverse rationalizations for working ourselves silly.

My little soapbox summation on balance:

The bottom line is to be in integrity with yourself and your deeper, authentic, Inspired Self within. Also, consider the bigger picture over time. Balance is a constantly moving, fluid condition. Evaluate your life in large windows of time, rather than beat yourself up for not devoting 2.25 hours every single day to item X. Balance is undoubtedly unique to each individual. What does balance mean for you and no one else?

Finally, let’s move one letter the other way from C to B to A. The way to an inspired life is all about Alignment, not Achievement. The most important question is not “Am I achieving balance (with a pie chart )?” but rather, Am I living in wholehearted alignment with my True Self? This is our deepest choice of all. In this moment, I can feel both- the wholehearted commitment calling me forward and a craving to declare “It’s Miller time. I’m done for the day.” So, the smart energy management choice is to take a break, then decide about a meeting at 7:30pm. May the Force be with us to keep making those choices wisely and learn from the times we don’t.

What is a new perspective you have about balance?

What will you do differently, starting today?