When you care about something, of course you want to give it your best – and you give your best by putting your head, heart, and hands to work. Giving your best also means putting your time, energy, and mental resources into it. And it also means going into go-go-go mode many times, one project after another and one task after another.
It’s a precious thing to care deeply about the things we do, for sure. What would life be without our passions, wants, and aspirations? They’re strong forces we use to navigate through many moments in our lives; they keep us moving, give us meaning, and point us toward our values.
But what happens when we keep moving without pausing to check how we’re living? What happens when we keep going and going, driven by our passions, without checking our rhythm, pace, and speed? What happens when we keep withdrawing from the bank account of life without making any deposits on it?
The myth of life-work balance
Well-known organizational psychologist Adam Grant (2020) has questioned multiple times the notion of life-work balance. The reality is that no matter how popular this idea has become, it’s a myth. Here’s why: when we truly care about something, our schedule is not balanced in terms of the number of hours we spend hanging out with friends and family and participating in other things that are important to us.
Think for a moment about your own day-to-day life: how often do you achieve this life-work balance everyone is talking about? How often do you find yourself worrying about overly focusing on one area and abandoning others? How often do you criticize yourself for not having life-work balance, as if something is wrong with you? How often do you feel the stress of striving to get things done under a deadline?
When we buy into the idea of having life-work balance, we dream about getting work done in four hours so we can then relax and devote four hours to hanging out with our significant other. We picture having a perfect balance, a perfect equipoise, a perfect equilibrium among the things, relationships, responsibilities, and tasks that are part of our lives.
The truth is that there may be times when that symphony of people, time, and activities that constitutes our lives gets harmoniously organized. But most of the time, it’s a tuneless, dissonant, and discordant collection of the things we do and the time we expend on them.
Life-work balance is a fantasy goal, period. Instead of striving for it, Grant suggests that it’s more important we find our life-work rhythm.
To find your work-life rhythm, I invite you to consider this question: How can you be consistent and flexible at the same time!
Flexible consistency
Hear me out for a moment. Have you ever seen runners training for a marathon? Some of them run every day for a specific number of weeks or months. Others run every other day. Others run with a certain frequency – say, two to three days in a row – take a break of the same length, and then pick it up again. Is that wrong? Does the frequency of a runner’s practice runs determine their chances of winning a race?
Quite likely, most of the messages you have heard about consistency are some version of, “You need to show up all the time. Consistency is the key to success. Showing up is half the battle.”
- But what really happens when you push yourself to show up unfailingly, and always to what you said you were going to do, without considering other circumstances in your life?
- What happens if you push yourself to work regularly while one of your best friends is going through a breakup, your pet is sick, or your partner is struggling with the kids?
Life is always happening, and rarely do we have the chance to choose what comes our way. Unexpected, unplanned, and unforeseen situations happen out of the blue. And when those moments occur, they invite us to revisit this idea of “100 percent consistency.”
Instead of holding tightly onto thoughts of “always showing up,” and variations on these thoughts, you may want to consider approaching things with flexible consistency (sounds like an oxymoron, right?).
Flexible consistency is about creating a consistent schedule to get things done in a way that is adjustable, adaptable, and changeable; basically, it’s about creating a schedule that is context-based and not rule-based.
There is no one way or the perfect way of making things happen and doing what matters; there are so many ways to do so. If you’re a maker, a doer, a creator, a person with a good track record, or a person who makes things happen, you know how it feels to be preoccupied with getting things done.
The key is to do these things without burning yourself out.
5 key questions to do what you care about, consistently!
Before you jump onto another activity, ask yourself these questions:
- Does this activity contribute to a life I’m proud of?
- Is this activity a move toward the life I want to build?
- How can you organize your values-based life into a well-orchestrated rhythm, from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep?
- How can you move from push-and-pull mode, where you strive to do more work, faster, and with excellent quality, to doing what you care about, at a high level, without burning yourself out?
- How can you create a seasonal schedule for doing what you care about?
