Reflections what it takes to build a more balanced life

The central principle of Slow Leadership — creating a civilized working environment — isn’t an easy task, especially in the present climate. It demands finding and holding a balance between legitimate business needs, career aspirations, social and family responsibilities, and leisure. And it isn’t being helped by some of the advice that’s given to look for answers in all the wrong places.

To find balance, you need first to know what it looks like. This is especially true of work/life balance — a topic that consistently produces more confusion than enlightenment.

It’s easy to say what balance is not:

• It’s not a fixed state. Life circumstances and work and career expectations change continually. What seemed desirable only a few months ago may now be unacceptable.
• It’s not some mathematical ratio between hours spent working and leisure or family time — let alone a 50:50 split.
• It’s not a way for organizations to try to turn reasonable and obvious working patterns into supposed “benefits” and then try passing them off as part of remuneration.
• It’s not an excuse for trying to get more paid vacations or better maternity (or paternity) leave arrangements.
• It’s not even a matter of time management or practical decisions about when, how, and whether to spend time on all of life’s various aspects.

The true elements in creating balance

The real demands associated with finding and holding a balance between the many aspects of life are all about choice, responsibility, and being alert to the consequences of your actions on yourself as well as on others.

How you spend your time is a consequence of your thoughts and intentions. What do you value most? What do you want to achieve? How do you wish others to see you and estimate your worth? These are all choices; and you are responsible for them all the time, whatever external pressures are placed on you.

Suppose your organization demands extra working hours. Can you refuse? Yes, so long as you are willing to accept the consequences. Of course, if you want most to be seen as a high flier and a model of corporate loyalty, any choice against extra working is not going to be a good one. But it’s still a choice you can make — and for which you are responsible; just as choosing to take on the work and maybe wreck your relationships is your responsibility.

Suppose you place a high value on the needs of your family. That choice comes with a great many consequences — not least those that may cause you to wish to limit time away from home or lengthy working hours. Should organizations make the implications less negative in career terms? There are good arguments that it’s in their wider interests to do so, but that doesn’t change the fact that putting family needs first will almost certainly bring some consequences you may not like. You can’t shirk responsibility for them, even if your employer’s attitude to family needs is back there with the Neanderthals.

Nearly every choice requires you to give up something to get what you want.

I read recently of someone with a fairly unremarkable income and more than $60,000 of credit card debt, mostly incurred to buy designer clothes and fuel an extravagant lifestyle. Should it have been so easy to get credit? Probably not. Did that person choose to get into such a mess financially? It seems so. Is their looming financial meltdown their responsibility? Absolutely.

No one forced them to live beyond their means. It was a choice — a choice to create and try to sustain an unbalanced way of life. For a time, it seemed to work, but the potential for disaster was clear from the beginning.

Facing the consequences of your choices

Decisions about how to spend our lives are tough and the outcome often uncertain. It’s tempting to try to shift responsibility onto others and claim that we had no choice. It’s also tempting to duck difficult choices by demanding a “right” to have it all: a rich family life with time off whenever it’s needed, unlimited time for fun, and unaffected promotion and earning opportunities.

It won’t wash. Finding balance can neither be handed over to others, nor avoided by claiming a non-existent right to have it all.

In life, incompatible desires and clashing priorities are constant. There are no ways to avoid them — or the consequences of whatever choices you make. Even failure or refusal to make a choice won’t help. Doing nothing is still a choice.

Finding a middle course

The only way to hold a balance is by waking up to your responsibility to do the best you can and accept that it’s never going to be perfect.

• It’s making choices consciously and carefully, instead of trying to avoid them or pass off onto circumstances or fate.
• It’s accepting that whatever balance — or imbalance — characterizes your life, is there because that’s what you chose.
• And it’s finding ways to meet work and non-work situations with intelligence and wide-open eyes for the likely results.

You are what you choose and what you fail to choose. Save in conditions of slavery or actual imprisonment, there are always other options.

It’s just that we usually don’t like them very much and don’t want to take so much responsibility for our lives. That’s why we prefer to believe we have no choice but to do what we do — and that our mistakes are forced on us by circumstances, others, or bad luck.

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