An Imperfect Balance

A lot of the stress of life involves us not finding a good balance between our work, our personal life and our interpersonal relations and societal obligations.  (which I’ve written abouthere).  The other part is knowing when good enough is good enough.

The Harvard Business Review  had a great article about how balancing life is always an imperfect activity.  The lead quote  is “You can have it all. It just won’t be perfect.” (http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2012/08/the-imperfect-balance-between.html)

The article then talks about the need to outsource your tasks to free up more time for yourself and how that requires you to give up control. The article is also about how to not get stuck in the trap of thinking if everything in your life isn’t perfect all the time, you have failed.  It’s this last part I agree with the most.

Life is messy. It’s imperfect. Our solutions to the problem of finding work life balance is always going to be, to a certain extent, out of balance, requiring constant re-adjustment from us. And yes, this is frustrating. If you’ve ever played a Wii Balance game you know, you have to constantly re-adjust your balance to do well.

So instead of getting angry that you can’t set your life on autopilot in order to enjoy it. Accept that life requires your active and intentional involvement to work well. Not perfectly, but well. This knowledge will help you free up your mind precisely because it is reality based.