What does “work-life balance” even mean these days? Because from where most people are standing, it kinda looks like answering Slack messages while half-watching TV at 8 p.m., or working by the pool on vacation and calling it “blessed.”
The phrase has been plastered on HR slide decks and wellness seminars for so long that it’s lost all contact with the reality of what people’s days actually look like. Dayna Lee-Baggley, a psychologist specializing in mental health in the workplace, wrote in Psychology Today that the idea of “balance” suggests two things sitting on opposite ends of a scale, level and still. But there’s no finish line. Life keeps moving, and the demands keep changing, which makes chasing equilibrium a perpetual struggle.
The word Lee-Baggley prefers is harmony—because it’s a more accurate description of what’s actually happening. Your work and your personal life aren’t two separate containers you shuttle between. They collide constantly. The school calls during a meeting. The work email notification dings at dinner. Harmony asks a different question than balance does: how do you allocate your energy across everything competing for it right now? That’s a problem with an actual answer, as opposed to a standard you’ll never achieve.
Energy Management Is Better Than Chasing Work-Life Balance
Energy is also the variable that the whole “just try harder” school of productivity doesn’t account for. A 2023 APA workplace survey found that 77% of workers reported work-related stress in the prior month, with over half describing symptoms of burnout. The demands aren’t scaling with anyone’s capacity—they’re scaling with email and Slack notifications and the general cultural expectation that being reachable is the same as being dedicated. It’s not. And the people burning out aren’t doing so because they gave up.
Lee-Bagley suggests an alternative called “energy management.” It starts with an honest look at what restores and revives you. Not the thing you do that you call rest. The scrolling, the TV, the drinking. No. It’s knowing what you have left on any given day, what can wait, what can be delegated to someone else, and what you just have to say no to. That assessment will change daily, and getting comfortable with the fact that it will never be finished or “steady” is the actual skill.
Balance implies you arrive somewhere. You’ve found the perfect middle ground. This is about staying honest with yourself about where you are. On that day. At your capacity.
The post Work-Life Balance Is Impossible. Experts Say Try This Instead. appeared first on VICE.
