There’s No Such Thing as Work-Life Balance

The following is adapted from The Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle.

If you can find the right work-life balance, you’ll finally be happy, right? The stress and misery of work will be balanced by the joy and fun of living your life. It makes sense in theory, but it almost never works in practice. 

Assuming you’ve been working for at least a few years, you’ve probably tried—and failed—to find a good work-life balance. Maybe you work until you’re burnt out and then take a vacation to recuperate. Or maybe you work ten-hour shifts so that you can have regular three-day weekends.

Again, on paper, these strategies sound nice, but in the real world, you know what happens? You keep pushing off that vacation you say you’re going to take. You spend your three-day weekend thinking and stressing about work. The “balance” you seek is only enough for you to keep your head above water, grinding away day after day. 

If your job makes you miserable, no amount of work-life balance finagling is going to make a difference. The idea that a few hours of happiness can balance out hours of misery is like saying that if somebody punches you in the face and then gives you a cupcake, everything is balanced. Sure, the cupcake is nice, but your face still hurts! It’s far better to avoid getting punched in the first place. But day after day, we are letting ourselves get punched in the face by our work.

Let’s take a deeper look at why we keep unsuccessfully chasing work-life balance and how we can break out of this cycle of “balance chasing.”

The Trap of Work-Life Balance

Countless people have fallen into the trap of work-life balance, and it’s because we lie to ourselves. The first lie we tell ourselves when seeking work-life balance is that we will actually make time for life. 

When many people think of “work-life balance,” they tell themselves, I’ll put my head down, not see my spouse or kids, work twelve hours a day, not sleep, and be miserable for a few weeks, but after that, I’ll come up for air, take some time off, and it will all balance out.

Aside from the fact that there is no guarantee that you’ll even be alive in a few weeks to enjoy that “balanced” time, that mentality often allows the “few weeks” to turn into a few months. Then maybe a few years. Before you know it, you’re telling yourself that you’ll come up for air in “another five or ten years.” Perhaps when “I have enough money in the bank.” Or perhaps “when I’m sixty-five and retire.”

The second lie we tell ourselves is that we don’t have enough money to change our work situation.

“I wish I could do what you did and just quit and gain my freedom,” my former client told me shortly after I shut down my seven-figure agency. “You know I don’t like this job, but I have young kids, and I just need to work a few more years to save enough money to move on.”

I’ve heard at least a dozen versions of that story during the past year. I know—and that former client knows—that the “few more years” is going to stretch into a much greater period of time. Because if you constantly think you just need “enough money to move on,” you’ll likely never have enough money.

My wife and I put off our European trip for seventeen years because we never had “enough money” to feel comfortable to take the trip—even when my agency was bringing in seven figures and I was having days in which I booked $300,000 in revenue!

I don’t want to minimize the importance of money. Making money is necessary to pay the bills and buy the things that make for a comfortable life. But it is far too easy to fall into the habit of always wanting more money. We live in a culture that encourages consumerism, and it’s tempting to try to keep up with the Joneses.

But money should be used to improve our lives. If your pursuit of money is making you miserable, you should reassess. Think about the things you truly need and the things you truly want. For me, I would much rather have more time to spend with my family than a new car. 

Don’t be a slave to money, or you will end up in an endless cycle of balance chasing.

Break the Cycle: The Future Is Not Guaranteed

There are so many people, just within my family and circle of acquaintances, who have fallen into an endless cycle of “balance chasing.” The “few years” continues to expand until there is this false hope that age sixty-five will bring paradise and a period of endless bliss. But they get to be sixty-five and they have to get a knee replacement (put the travel on hold!). Or they have a stroke. Or get cancer. Or have a heart attack. Or one of those things afflicts their spouse or children.

I don’t write this to be macabre or alarmist. I write it because these are all things that have happened to multiple people I know.

There is no guarantee that you’ll live to the end of today. There is no guarantee that you’ll live to sixty-five. And if you’re spending the prime health years of your life in a “wait to sixty-five” mode, you’re not truly living at all. You’re setting yourself up for the “Where did the time go?” freight train to hit you at some point in the future. You’re building toward the desperate feeling that you missed seeing your kids growing up because you were too busy with your head down, building toward “balance” at some mythical point in the future.

You’re guaranteeing that, at some point, you’re going to wish you had traveled more, that you had worked out more, that you had spent more time with your kids, that you had invested more in your relationships.

Alignment, Not Balance

Here’s the deal: there’s not work and life. There’s just life, and how you choose to spend the time in your life is entirely up to you. The key to a life of freedom and fulfillment isn’t balance; it’s alignment—aligning the three facets of your life: family, self, and work.

If you keep chasing balance, you’re gambling away your best years in the hope that you’ll have time for life later on. Life and time are too precious to gamble that way. Stop chasing that mythical “work-life balance.” Start seeking alignment instead.

For more advice on how to align your life for greater happiness and fulfillment, you can find The Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle on Amazon.

Curt Mercadante is an international speaker, coach, trainer, and disruptive entrepreneur whose mission is to save the world by helping people fight for lives of freedom and fulfillment. Curt's speeches and training empower individuals to live their Freedom Lifestyle, and he also hosts the popular Freedom Club Podcast. Raised in the Chicago area, he and his wife, Julie, now live in Charleston, South Carolina, with their four children, when they aren't traveling the world. Curt is a diehard fan of the White Sox, a superhero nerd, and can frequently be found at his local boxing gym.