Forget Work-Life Balance. Work-Life Curation Is What’s Saving Me During this Pandemic

Holy cow! We all thought work-life balance was tough before the COVID-19 crisis. Now, with kids home all day, spouses working at home, and the stress of worrying about friends and family, it’s harder than ever to “balance” everything.

I’ve been thinking for a long time that work-life balance is a myth anyway. Early in my career, I was running a small business, teaching a huge university course, writing a weekly newspaper column, raising three little boys, trying to be a good partner to my husband, etc., etc. I’m a high-energy person, but a lot of the time I was running on fumes. It seemed to me that I was doing none of it very well. I looked at other people who appeared to have it all together: the prominent physician who was also writing books, raising three kids and serving as a leader in our synagogue; the professor who was doing cutting-edge research, raising four kids, writing poetry and learning to play the guitar; or the brilliant, highly respected therapist with the magnificent home, always impeccably dressed and beautiful. And then there was me.

How were they doing it? I used to torture myself with the image of the person I thought I should be–always calm and pleasant, on top of all my responsibilities and still having time to be loving and funny and available to others.

And then one day I had a huge revelation. I realized that other people were looking at me as one of those people doing it all. I was dumbfounded. Didn’t they know what a train wreck I was? Wasn’t it obvious?

This led me to revelation No. 2. Nobody is doing it all. Everyone cuts corners somewhere. Some of us are just better than others at hiding our “dirty little secrets.”

And here’s revelation No. 3. Most of us make the cardinal mistake of comparing our own insides to other people’s outsides. Those folks who look as if they have it all together? Inside, they’re just as freaked out, overworked and self-critical as you are. How do I know? Because I’ve been a psychologist for over 25 years, working first with therapy patients and then with business executives. And the amazing thing is, both groups are struggling with feeling inadequate because they’re burning themselves out trying to do too much.

These discoveries led me to the realization that work-life balance is a dangerous fantasy. Nobody has a balanced life. So instead of trying to be circus acrobats, what if we tried to curate our lives instead? A museum curator creates a beautiful exhibit by carefully selecting and arranging what goes into the exhibit. What if we did the same with our lives? That would mean sorting your activities into three categories:

o The things you are not going to do, at least not right now
o The things you will be mediocre at
o The things you will be great at

This is not simple. It means making hard choices. Let me give you an example. Years ago, when I had three small children, I made a list of all the stuff I was no longer doing since I started having kids. The list included:

o Going to professional conferences
o Writing scholarly articles
o Reading multiple professional journals and all the latest books
o Serving on a community board
o Sending holiday cards
o Sewing my clothes
o Hosting big parties
o Reading novels
o Doing our laundry
o Baking bread
o A bunch of other stuff

Please note all the things on the list were good things to do. Most of them were things I enjoyed (the laundry, not so much). But to do the things that were really important to me–looking after my children, loving my husband, running a busy psychological practice–I had to cut all that stuff out. Most of the things on the list I have since reclaimed. Not the holiday cards or the sewing–they’re gone forever.

Of course, I’m not suggesting your list should be the same as mine. But you do need to consciously decide what you’re going to cut out–and then make it happen.

Even harder for many people is accepting when “good enough” is good enough. Expecting yourself to be perfect at everything is a recipe for failure. You know that saying, “The good is the enemy of the great?” Nonsense! The good is the friend of the great. By settling for good, or even mediocre, in some parts of your life, you free up your energy to become great at the really important activities. So consciously and deliberately choose where you will be mediocre. And by the way, you don’t have to tell people what you have chosen. Most of the time they won’t notice.

Here’s the good news. If you learn how to say no and how to accept mediocrity when it’s good enough, that will leave you with the energy to be great at the things that really matter to you. Curating your life isn’t easy, but it’s doable.

Those people I mentioned earlier, the ones who seemed to be doing it all? Of course they weren’t. But they were leading curated lives, focused on the activities where they wanted to be great. No one gets this right all the time, but you can learn to do it better.

So now, in the midst of this pandemic, it’s time to curate. Step one is getting very clear on what matters right now, putting our energy into those activities, and stepping back from all the stuff that’s just not that important. And I’m hearing from many people that they’re also moving on to step two, reflecting on what they are learning from this crisis period that will influence the choices they make as life gradually gets back to normal.

My heartfelt wish for you is that you curate your life so you reach your greatness, find meaning and experience deep and abiding joy.

Gail Golden, MBA, Ph.D., is the author of Curating Your Life: Ending the Struggle for Work-Life Balance (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers). She is the founder and principal of Gail Golden Consulting, LLC, an international management psychology consulting firm, helping business leaders and organizations hit peak performance by drawing on her unique cross-background perspective as a licensed psychologist and an MBA-holding entrepreneur.