To Chase “Balance” Is To Chase Mediocrity

I first came across Jason Seiden thanks to this great article “Screw Your Career Path, Live Your Story.“  I found it to be smart and informative and an idea not often thought of…many just go along with the status quo…this was turning the status quo on its ear.  He continues that tradition here.  After my appearance on HR Happy Hour Jason tweeted: “@leanneclc Great points on #HRHappyHour yesterday. My take: To chase balance is to chase mediocrity.”  I was intrigued.  I’d been talking about this concept for over a year, was I chasing mediocrity?  The more I thought about it…the more I thought he had a point.  If everything is in equilibrium and nothing is challenging you or pushing you forward…perhaps that is mediocrity…and I certainly do my best work when challenged.  I asked Jason to clarify…he did…I’d love to hear what you think:

Work/life balance? Ha! That’s a funny one. (And don’t let’s pretend like changing the phrase to “work/life choices” makes the idea any less hilarious!)

Why is this phrase so funny? Because there is no such thing as work/life balance, and no such thing as a work/life choice—that’s why.  To believe that there is either is to perpetuate intellectual dishonesty; to make either the foundation for career decisions is to ensure mediocrity in life.

Let me repeat that: to strive for work/life balance is to ensure mediocrity in life. That’s not a joke, by the way. I’m not being funny, ironic, sarcastic, or witty here. I’m dead serious: work/life balance is a juvenile, incomplete, ill-constructed doctrine. Which is why when I speak about How to Self-Destruct, “work/life balance” is my lead-off.

For starters, the language of work/life anything guarantees failure. “Work/life?” With a slash? As if these two things are discrete items that can be weighed against one another? Excuse me?!

“Life” is all encompassing. It includes everything from my first breath to my last, maybe more. Which makes me wonder: if life is everything, then what the hell is this “work” thing that we’ve separated out from it? If there is a work/life choice what could work possibly be that I’d choose it over life?! These semantics subtly and profoundly frame our impression of work in the negative, and describing our world in this way guarantees a certain amount of stress.

You know what else guarantees stress? The extreme language we use to describe a lack of “balance.” Is your schedule “insane”? Is your client work “blowing up” this week? Are you “crazy busy”? Does your boss “drive you nuts” with all those last minute requests? Do you really think it’s possible to find balance in a world in which scheduling challenges make you “insane,” “crazy,” or “nuts”? Here’s a clue: no. It’s not. Not even if you had all the Calgon in the world could you escape that sort of intensity.

(Think I’m making too big a deal of semantics? Remember the story of Tower of Babel, which God put an end to not by robbing men of their architectural abilities, but by making it difficult for them to communicate with one another. Language matters.)

And then there is how people implement “work/life balance”—whatever the hell that means. I particularly love the exercise of looking at the 168 hours in a week and figuring out where to spend them all.

“OK now… I want to sleep 7 hours a night… that’s 49 hours down… then there’s commuting time, meals, workouts, entertainment, meetings, phone calls…” Pretty soon, you realize that Peter Gibbons from Office Space was right: when you look at the world that way, you really can only get about 15 minutes of real, actual work done in a week.

There is no such thing as a balanced day. Or a balanced week. Sometimes, whole months—or even years—are spent focused on singular pursuits. The idea is to surround yourself with your passions (even better, cultivate your passions from out of what you currently do!) so that wherever you are, it’s someplace you like being. When you surround yourself with passion, you can make each day what it needs to be for you to be successful.

Balance is something that happens over the long term. It is an outcome of always being surrounded by passion. And it is has to do with managing the tension across all the subplots of your life… not just one of them. Balance is not something to shoot for day-to-day.

Strive for passion, achieve balance. Strive for balance, achieve… jack squat.

So, when it comes to work, do you really want “balance”? The “choice” is yours.

Jason Seiden is the author of How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What’s Left of Your Career and Super Staying Power: What You Need to Become Valuable & Resilient at Work. His recipe for career success is simple: screw your “career path,” live your story.