Work Life Balance: A Myth?

Many people tout work life balance as the end all be all of time management.

The reality is that there is no such thing as work life balance. Life comes and goes in seasons. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Life has a cadence. Periods of work and toil followed by periods of lax and ease.

This is important to understand because you may throw off the balance in the short term but regain balance overall in the long term .

For example, studying for the MCAT can lead to burnout and exhaustion. But it is often followed by a relatively free summer before the start of medical school. In the short term balance is thrown off but in the long term there is a course correction.

Which leads me to my point. Accept that the balance is thrown off in the short term and don't try to fight it. The seasons of life will ultimately balance themselves. Winter is always followed by Spring.

The last example of this is an entrepreneur who is starting a business. They may try to condense a 15-20 year career into a brutal 5 years of work. That person in the short term is completely off balance but over longer time horizon they regain their freedom and so it balances out on average.

Your mantra should be: balance over time, but not necessarily in the moment.