ON BUSINESS || The Myth of Work-Life Balance

I’ve spoken on entrepreneurship at conferences, seminars, workshops, and panels, and the most common question I’ve received is: How do you manage your work-life balance?

My initial responses catered to the feel-good aspect to encourage aspiring entrepreneurs that they could, in fact, have it all: work, family, friendships, and mental health. But I’ve not come across a successful entrepreneur who’s gotten to where they are by working a 9-5 and then turning their phones off to enjoy all that life has to offer.

After starting and running businesses for close to two decades, I’m much more comfortable sharing the hard truth because I want others to know what they’re getting themselves into and to dispel this myth that there’s an ideal work-life balance we are all trying to hit.

I tell them, “Think of it this way. There are two people, and both have to run ten miles. The first person runs 2 miles daily; the second person runs 5 miles daily. Who gets there first?”

Nothing is wrong with how fast and far you want to run every day. The point is that we all control our own pace depending on our comfort level. Everyone has a different tolerance. But, we have to be realistic in that if one person puts in more effort, they are much more likely to get there first. 

Some people feel that getting two hours of me-time during the evening is already a win. Others feel they need at least four hours of me-time daily to feel sane. The so-called balance is different for everyone. 

Let me share a story from when I was in high school. I spent much of my time studying because I wanted to be the best. I would come up with a hundred potential questions for a test to quiz myself, and even then, I would study some more. My friend’s circle consisted of people others would consider “nerds”. Here comes the funny part: the other nerds started ignoring me one day, and I had no idea what was happening. My tendency to air out problems and talk things over started from a young age, and I decided to confront my friends. Guess what they told me? 

“We don’t like that you’re studying too much.”

Hold on. The nerds don’t like that I’m studying too much? Precisely. How odd. I didn’t know there was a threshold I wasn’t supposed to cross with the hours I invested into my studies. The issue wasn’t that my friends were jealous of my grades; they just didn’t like that I was working too hard. It’s still a mystery to me why they were so bothered by another person’s efforts. 

Bringing this back to my analogy of running ten miles, they did not like my pace, that I was running more than them every day, even though they also had the choice to match my pace. Asking someone for their work-balance routine or best practices is like asking whether they like to have their coffee iced or hot. It’s a preference, and we all land along a spectrum of what would be considered just the right balance of work and life.

Just because another person chooses to do more isn’t an invitation for others to judge that they do not have the coveted work-life balance society thinks we should all seek to have. Who are we to judge how much time someone else decides to pour into their craft? This is just one of many societal norms imposed on everyone as if it makes total sense. What do you think? Should everyone be able to define their form of balance?