You are not your job
moving beyond work-life balance
Years ago I was giving a talk to a group of new pediatric fellows when one raised her hand asking, “I keep hearing faculty encourage me to ‘find work-life balance’, but I don’t actually know what that means”. I longed for the right words to respond but found them lacking. I acknowledged how hard it is to find any type of balance in medical training but I mostly avoided giving an answer because I didn’t have one. Though I had certainly thought A LOT about the relationship between my work and my personal life over the years, I myself lacked a coherent understanding for what we were telling people when we encouraged them to have work-life balance.
Thinking about concepts and their meaning drives my curiosity and so, a few years later, I co-published a paper looking at what the literature had to say about this term. With a team of colleagues, we scoured the published literature looking at every article that had studied what I was calling ‘the physician work-personal intersection’ (WPI). We found 102 studies that made it into our final analysis - looking at the words used by the authors, whether they defined their terms, and how they measured the WPI. What we found wasn’t surprising to me - papers lacked consistency and different terms (work-life balance, work-life integration, work-life conflict) were used across the literature and sometimes even within the same paper. Authors were rarely (only 8 out of 102 times) defining the term they used. The ‘results’ validated my sense that we didn’t have a consistent mental model when we talk about work-life balance.
the question keeps finding me
I recently had the joy of speaking as a panel member at the Association for Health Care Executives conference in Wisconsin. The last question for the panel was - “how have you as a leader supported your own work-life balance?” During my prep, I found that I really didn’t want to answer this question, my unease with the concept still present. I was also speaking to healthcare executives, and wondered whether my truthful answer would even resonate with them.
But I went with my gut - having learned over the years that the authentic answer is the best way I can be a vessel of evolution in how we think and talk about such topics. I shared how I had disregarded the word, and had come to recognize that for me, it was never about balance. Instead, the most powerful process related to the relationship between my work and life has been no longer defining my identity by my work. This unfolding didn’t happen overnight, but through a slow, years long process. Each role I take on has become a new opportunity to practice this mantra: I am not my work. Instead, I’ve come to see my work as a vehicle through which I can express myself. I am not it, it is not me, it is a vessel, not an identity.
I spoke about why this realization - not just the cognitive awareness but knowing in my being - is so important. The most obvious is because work is something that can be taken away from us, we can be fired or let go, we can have a passion project that no one wants to fund or participate in. Not over-identifying with our work protects us so that when things don’t go well or when we have to learn and grow rather than achieve - we still know we are whole and worthy human beings. My co-panelist added to this - suicide rates among nurses and physicians (especially women physicians) are higher than rates in the general population.1 Over identification with work carriers in its side bag things like maladaptive perfectionism and stoic heroism - interfering with help seeking and stigmatizing struggle. If I can’t be [fill in the blank] or do [job role] well, who am I?
But just as important has been the realization that if my work is a vehicle of self-expression - it doesn’t have to be the place where all of me is expressed. Its one way for me to be in the world. It doesn’t have to be everything. This mindset has been incredibly freeing - I actually need other things in my life than work. Its not supposed to be everything. I can find joy, meaning, fulfillment, purpose, etc from things other than work. This frees up resentment about what work isn’t and what I’m not getting from it. It shifts the tone from guilt or selfishness for wanting things outside work to simply ‘I can’t get everything I need from work’. It empowers me to seek things that help me feel like a whole person. It doesn’t count hours or balance but asks - is all of me being honored in my life?
problem with our current terminology
The most commonly used terms - work-life balance and work-life integration - are inherently limited because they both include fundamental beliefs that many hard working professionals can’t align with. The first being that they should or even can have a balance in the energy and time they spend at work and their personal life. I’ve heard it said that we spend more of our life working than any other thing in our life other than sleeping! Of course you feel stressed at the idea of balancing all the components of your personal life with your work. Its very abnormal to actually achieve this (abnormal as in uncommon, not as in weird), though it can be wonderful if you are able to. Or maybe trying to integrate your work and personal life sounds a whole lot like not having boundaries, something so many professionals are working on. Though some folks like the term integration because it implies a flexibility to build work and a life that work well together, integration can suggest we should always be working, or always be caregiving/parenting for that matter. Some of us like a little separation.
its about relationships
I think my mindset shift happened when I recognized that what we are usually talking is not only the relationship between our work and personal life but also our relationship with each of them. Yes, work can ask too much of us, but I know that I have also enabled an unsustainable and self-harming level of giving when I saw work and my roles as me, as my worth, and my value. Recognizing that we have identity outside work offers us empowerment, which is critical at a time when toxic productivity has become the norm.
real life application
Describing this process is simpler than what it looks like to live through it. Starts and stops. Times of overworking, then realizing I’ve abandoned myself again. Trying hobbies to see what brings me joy, negotiating time away for myself with my family. Choosing to work less so other parts of me have space to be and do. Ongoing reflection about what I need, what has changed and how I meet that. Working with the parts of me that are uncomfortable resting or spending time ‘unproductively’. It is not easy. But it is clarifying. Work-life balance isn’t on my mind anymore. I’m not checking out there to see if I’m doing it right. I’m looking inward - am I honoring my commitments to my work, my family, my friends, and myself? When I notice that resentment building at work I ask - what parts of I am I not expressing? What are the tools at my disposal to express that (using vacation, setting boundaries etc)?
For me, it all boils down to a sense of freedom. Do I believe that I can make intentional choices for myself based on my values and needs? Do I believe that my purpose can expand beyond a paid role and title? Do I feel free to choose?
May you see yourself as bigger than what you do,
Sarah
Journaling prompts:
What came up for you as you read this essay? How do you see your work relating to your identity?
List five things you enjoy doing.
How hard or easy was it to come up with this list? What is the relationship between this list and your work?
What is one interest, need, or part of you that you want to more fully express or explore? How can you do this in a small way this week?
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/female-physicians-continue-to-face-elevated-risk-of-suicide/