4. Make choices, make it yours.
I hate to say it, but we have to accept that we must make choices.
In an interview with Kinfolk, Alain de Botton, best-selling author and founder of The School of Life in London, said, “Work-life balance is a myth…. You have to make choices, and therefore sacrifices. Having it all exists only in the mind of [Facebook COO] Sheryl Sandberg.” The reality is in today’s social and work environment, it is difficult to truly have work-life balance. Most CEO’s, for example, have made family sacrifices, and it’s not unheard of to hear some men and women say they are stepping away from their high-powered jobs to dedicate more time to their families. There are always trade-offs—when doing really well in one area of life, we’re often not as successful in other areas. This tends to be especially true for women who typically care for others, be it a child or a parent.
Here’s some guidance on coming to grips with making choices for yourself and crafting the kind of work/life integration you desire.
Acceptance
First, there needs to be an acceptance that choices need to be made, else women will continue to be plagued by the “do it all” syndrome. This can be viewed as a negative (i.e., I have to cut things out, I have to prioritize and minimize), but it should be viewed as empowering. We are responsible and culpable for where our time goes, and therefore we are in control of making decisions that can improve the balance in our lives.
Optimize
There are two ways to optimize your ability to achieve your desired goals. The first is to get better at how we manage our schedule and our physical and mental energy. For example, David Rock’s book, “Your Brain at Work,” provides excellent tips for optimizing how you use your mental energy. Second, we can make choices of where we spend our time to align with what’s most important to us, regardless of society’s should’s. If you don’t like where your time and energy is going, then investigate why and change your focus to better align with your priorities and what’s most important to you. (Read more on Make Choices here.)
Pace Yourself
Another way to think about balance and managing one’s career is to consider pacing oneself over the decades, considering the realities of all we try to balance. I call it The Tides of Ambition. Ambition is like the ebbs and flows of tides—sometimes it’s in and sometimes it’s out. If we are honest with ourselves, there are times when we want to be all in, when we have deep commitment to our work and simply can’t say no to an opportunity. Yet there can also be the opposite, when we need or want to have the demands or interests in other aspects of our lives take precedent over career. In these moments, one needs to make a choice rather than continually beat herself up over the weight of trying to do it all. Anne-Marie Slaughter, well-known for her article in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” has talked about the idea of taking on or off ramps with regard to one’s career, which is similar in thinking. Aligned with when your ambition might be waning, you might need to ramp down, but keep your foot in the work world. And when that choice is made, it’s important to step into the decision and confidently own it. Similarly, women can fully own when they are dedicated to their career and utilize strategies to help them balance other life demands.
Get Help
Most of us don’t like to ask for help. If you’re lucky enough to be able to afford it, consider hiring additional support. These days there are more flexible options available to you. If you are leaning into your career in one moment, perhaps you want to consider hiring a virtual personal assistant to take some day-to-day administrative tasks off your plate. Or, maybe you could find a neighbor or school parent to share carpool duties with you. It could even mean asking your husband and children to step up in a few areas. I’m sure you could come up with several clever ways to get support if you were to pause and brainstorm ideas on specific needs for just a quiet while. Consider picking up the book, “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” by Greg McKeown for some ideas on how to focus on the most critical and essential priorities and come up with ideas to shed the less important tasks.
Create a New Model, a Pro-Pro Life
What I mean by a “pro-pro” life is creating a new work-life model that makes your career work for you. To do so, work with the concept of “Integrative Thinking” as developed by Roger Martin. Pick up the book, “Creating Great Choices: A Leader's Guide to Integrative Thinking,” that he and his partner, Jennifer Riel, wrote on how one can learn to create new models through integrative thinking. The idea of “pro-pro” comes from one of the tools they have in the book, which contrasts with a pro-con list. From the book, you’ll learn how to generate integrative solutions, ones that aren’t binary in their choices (i.e., choose Option A or Option B). Instead they advocate an approach that generates new models by comparing opposing ones, in turn generating the better of the two worlds. Learn more about Integrative Thinking and the approach here and/or consider watching this video.
The point is that the world doesn’t always present the best models. We often are making choices between two equally sub-optimal solutions. So why not create a new model, one that results in a new work-life solution that uniquely works for you? A way that will bring together your work and life in a way aligns with your goals and priorities? The approach that Martin and Riel outline is a great way to get unblocked and see new possibilities.
People are not one note. We are more complex beings that often need and want to integrate more of ourselves into our lives to feel more fulfilled.
The hard part is that there is only so much time in a day. To find a solution, compromise isn’t the answer. Making choices, being smart about how you utilize your time and energy, and crafting something uniquely new is often required. To continue to hold ourselves to a “do it all” standard is unhealthy. Much better to be in control and shape the balance you want in your world.