When did we all get so obsessed with the balanced life?
We’ve all seen her, that woman from the TV series. She’s running late from a meeting straight to a yoga class, changing in the car while still on a call with her client, treating herself to a glass of wine afterward with her friends, and serving a full-course dinner when she gets home.
Somewhere along the way, we got used to the idea that being a “good woman” means doing it all: being a loving mother, a supportive partner, looking beautiful, staying healthy and fit, making money and building a career, keeping a social life active, traveling, you name it. A checklist that grows longer every decade.
I tried to keep up. For decades. And I managed, until I didn’t. Not because I was doing too much; plenty of women do far far more. What broke me was the constant feeling that I should balance my life better, that there was something wrong with me for feeling tired, scattered, or behind.
The kind of balance I imagined was a woman who had everything under control:
- Manages her career and home effortlessly,
- Is an attentive mother and passionate partner,
- Exercises, travels, and looks glowing and calm.
Until I understood that what I called balance in truth should have been called performance. One based on perfection.
Maybe “balancing” is just a nicer word for “multitasking.” Packaged nicely by the beauty and wellness industry, maybe it’s just another way to make us feel like we’re not enough, even when we’re doing our best.
Chasing balance felt to me like chasing my own tail: you might catch it for a moment, but you can’t hold on for long. Because real life is cyclical, messy, and constantly shifting. And nobody has it truly balanced. NO-BO-DY!
When we work long hours, we make more money and satisfy our clients or bosses, but our families feel upset, coz we don’t have time to always be available for them. When we take time for ourselves, whether it’s meeting friends or working out, we feel that we’re failing both: work and family.
There are seasons in life when work takes over, years when motherhood demands everything, and days when our own needs have to come first just to keep us afloat.
The Science Behind the Exhaustion
Cognitive psychology has a term for what happens when we keep switching between roles, different, often unrelated, task, it’s context switching.
Each time we shift focus, from work to home, from caring to producing, from mother to professional, our brain pays a price. It loses focus, burns more energy, and increases cortisol, the stress hormone.
We proudly call it balance and productivity. But biologically, it’s just a chaos.
Choosing Focus Over Balancing
The last few years of my life were split in half: one for work and one for my child. My daughter was preparing for her O-levels in order to be accepted to the uni, and every day was a blur of cooking, cleaning, managing her studies, tracking her vitamins, handling her crises, researching dorms, you know all the invisible things that mothers manage silently.
The second part was working late, pushing the limits to achieve our business goals. Did we achieve it all? Yes. But did I have a “well-balanced” life? Hell no. I existed.
It wasn’t pretty. It was tiring, and it wasn’t peaceful. I dismissed my social life; my fiancé and I barely had any time together as a couple. But it was necessary. We all understood the importance. We chose it.
I knew this stage wouldn’t last forever, and I understood its significance, so I gave it everything I had. Before that, there were years when her routine was stable, and I really enjoyed working late. Those years weren’t balanced either, but they had flow, and they had purpose.
The Doctor Who Couldn’t Rest
I once had a client, a doctor and mother of two small children, who decided to stay home for four years to raise them. From the outside, it looked like a dream: time with her kids, being present. But she couldn’t enjoy it.
Every day she’d feel guilty for not being in the hospital, not publishing research, not keeping up with her colleagues. Instead of mothering fully, she was haunted by the idea that she was wasting her potential.
That’s the kind of guilt women live with. Men don’t seem to carry it in the same way.
We’ve been taught that being “good” means constantly performing. And even when we’re doing the right thing, we feel like we’re failing somewhere else. That relentless internal scoreboard never stops ticking, and it leaves us exhausted, frustrated, and often disconnected from the very life we’re trying to build.
Maybe Balance Isn’t the Goal
Great designers, athletes, or politicians all achieve extraordinary results because they make sacrifices. They can’t always make time for their family and friends, and when they do, it’s rare and intentional. If your goal now is to excel in something, whether it’s motherhood, your career, or a personal project you must give it the attention it deserves.
If you’re raising kids, be fully present in that time, it will pass sooner than you think. If you’re working on a new project, use all your resources. If you’re resting, switch the phone off and be offline. Life won’t always be the same. You can’t do everything, and you can’t be everywhere at once. But you can give our best to what matters right now.
Life, like your career, isn’t about staying perfectly flat; it’s about constantly shifting. Let’s take the flat hierarchy at work, for example. Honestly I believe that both concepts, balance and the flat structure, are hard and unnecessary pursuits of the unattainable. It’s like these two main characters, the homeless men, in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, waiting for someone named Godot to deliver salvation.
While the flat hierarchy at work promises freedom, equality, and empowerment, but in reality, it often gives extra responsibility, the same pay, and no clear paths to grow. Promotions become symbolic; recognition turns into fluffy titles like project lead or culture champion, without real authority or compensation. People end up managing themselves, company goals, and each other, with no extra pay, nor actual power to shape decisions. The idea of pure balance suggests constant inner stillness. But even when we follow all the “rules”: good sleep, a healthy breakfast, a jog before work, focused productivity during the day, dinner with the family, TV on the sofa, we somehow feel behind. The more effort we put into balancing it all, the less balanced we actually feel.
Balance, the way we see it, might be a myth, along with multitasking, happiness, and the flat hierarchy at work. So focus on your health when times are hard. Make sure your priorities, not those you declare, but those you actually believe in, are in place. Keep yourself satisfied with what you do, proud of what you’ve achieved, and happy with how you’ve adapted. Be present, notice the flow, grow, and be useful. That, in itself, is enough.
