I heard it once put this way: that “balance” is often misconceived as “evenness” or “stillness”, but if you balance on one foot, are there not dozens or hundreds of micro movements in your foot, leg, and body to keep you “balanced”?
The point made here is that “balance” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all one side vs. another at just one time or another. Instead, with work and life, too, perhaps we must make the many micro movements to make efforts in both throughout our thoughts and behaviors. That is, less compartmentalizing and more integrating.
Text your spouse in the middle of the day between meetings just to say “Hi, I love you”. Take that occasional work email between (not during) dinner and TV time. It takes a lot of intention and may not look perfect or be that simple. Especially with knowledge work, it’s less realistic to expect hard starts and stops. We do have to take care of our mindfulness and presence from moment to moment. Either way, the source of effort is not work-you or life-you, but rather, just you.
What we think of as “balance” is actually constant motion brought forth with intentionality, is it not? Then, what are the kinds of micro movements we might consider making to achieve that integrated balance?
In Between Degrees 