Big Little Things“Work / life balance” is crap
Have you ever wondered why, say, Madonna keeps at it? She could have retired years ago and done whatever the fuck she wanted for as long as she wanted. My theory is that she loves her work, and she doesn’t see it as conflicting with her life—in fact, it is her life. And just like her, there are lots of super rich, super successful, actively creative and entrepreneurial people who really would NOT rather be fishing.
My point: the minute you say “work / life balance” is the minute you define work and life in opposition to each other. If your work and life are fighting against each other, and every minute spent working is a minute lost living, well, you’re gonna get sick. Spending hours of daily effort on something that you believe to be anti-life is too stressful to be sustainable. It’s probably why nobody has actually achieved work / life balance.
But if you say that your life is your work, and your work is your life, things start to look a little different. It becomes utterly clear that you must find work that feels true to who you are. (How to decide what you actually want to do with your time and effort is a huge topic I won’t broach in this post, but stay tuned.) And it becomes utterly clear that work can be invigorating enough, nourishing enough, and fulfilling enough that you would never want to separate it from your life.
I’m not married (know any cute single chicks?), but let me demonstrate my point with an analogy to spousal relations: If you’re trying to achieve a “marriage / life balance,” you’re fucked, no?
February 7th, 2007 at 8:39 am
i know:
lot’s of cute single chicks.
i DON’T know:
what sort of work i could be doing that would be fulfilling.
i enjoy your site axel!
February 7th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Reminds me of Ghandi’s quote, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” That’s not to say that they are all exactly the same, but that they are meaningfully related and not in opposition to each other. They’re not balanced horizontally like on a see-saw, but aligned vertically like notes in a chord. Simple, but difficult to achieve.
February 8th, 2007 at 10:32 am
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