“And if you are committed to making progress and ready to devote yourself to the effort, then give up everything else. Otherwise your ambivalence will only ensure that you don’t make progress… Formerly, when you were devoted to worthless pursuits, your friends found you congenial company. But you can’t be a hit in both roles. To the extent you cultivate one you will fall short in the other.” -Epictetus
We’re all familiar with the concept of balance: that illusive state of idyllic being for which we spend our days striving. The irony being that sometimes the striving for brings us more stress than what balance is supposed to free us from. We try so hard to be “balanced" that we end up finding we’re not particularly thrilled in any one area. We’re just, tired. On the contrary, imagine being so dialed in to exactly what your present circumstances or desires demand of you that you freely make decisions that may seem counterintuitive or painful on the surface, but in actuality, accelerate the time to achieving your goals. Sometimes over-indexing on balance slows us down—and not in the good, “stop and smell the roses” way, but in the way that makes us endure unwanted things for longer than necessary.
And so, what might be better than balance? Clarity. Clarity in what this season demands of you.
Something the Stoics consistently implore us to do is to test our judgements—to scrutinize the way we see things and why we see them that way. Be unafraid to acknowledge the difference between arbitrary widely-held conceptions, and what is practically, really true for you. It’s hard to regret a life that you enjoyed. It’s hard to regret missing out on things when you believed in whatever it was you were doing instead. All we have are our unique moments, our unique experiences—we need not submit ourselves to collective beliefs or perspectives that we feel we should also ascribe to merely because the masses seem to. How much of our sensation of “missing out” is just a result of societally-manufactured expectations? It’s fair to question whether we’re acutely aware enough—acutely attuned to our own senses and desires to know that our depression isn’t [always] internally-driven, but a result of a belief in what our lives should look like. The opposite is an acceptance of what your life is, and a corresponding search for what unique advantages and benefits that your specific life has given you.
If you want your life to look different, you have to act differently. Abnormal results require abnormal actions.
Think of anyone who is or was extraordinary at something. Beyonce. J.K. Rowling. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Their lives weren’t balanced. Balance is the path to average. No one who was notably great at anything was balanced. I’m not saying that everyone should strive for notoriety, but rather, that whatever it is you do want to be great at will require some level of imbalance (parenting, creating, leading, etc.).
So what we have to decide on is what we want. The people who stand out are the people who lead lives of imbalance. The simple fact is this: aspiring to anything requires imbalance. Giving equal attention to eight things makes you equally average at eight things. It is the person who is singularly dedicated to something (be it for a time, or for all of time), who ultimately becomes the standard in that space.
“From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the norm. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do—now.” -Epictetus
Don’t strive for balance—strive for clarity. Clarity of intention, clarity of season. Striving for balance leaves you at risk of not meeting your specific goals, because instead, you’ve decided to chase a vague concept (read: balance) that those around you have told you is absolutely necessary to achieve happiness. Clarity means you know what this season requires of you. This season might require late nights and less happy hours because you know where you want to be in a year.
We tend to think of balance in the micro, instead of the macro. In other words, when we think of balance, we think of leaving work at five, having dinner with our families every night, doing yoga every morning, not opening our work laptops on the weekends, and being utterly fulfilled every moment of every day. This is balance in the micro: where nothing feels “overdone” and you never feel overworked. Balance in the macro means managing your time based on your time-bound goals. It means that for three months you’re not going to drink or eat carbs because of your upcoming fitness competition. It means that for the foreseeable future you’ll be working nights and weekends to hit a project or promotional goal. It means that instead of going to happy hour, you go home to work on your side business with the hopes of it launching by a certain date. Balance in the macro means that you look back on certain seasons and say, I did exactly what I needed to do.
Now, it’s important that we don’t conflate balance with consistency. We should be in regular pursuit of the lifestyles we want to maintain (otherwise known as routine)—exercising regularly, learning and skilling up, etc. The key is knowing that some seasons call for extreme levels of focus in one area, at times, at the expense of another. And that’s okay.
"The more you know what you really want, and where you're really going, the more what everybody else is doing starts to diminish.” -Alain de Botton