🧪 Work-life chemistry

When "balance" seems impossible, find your formula for success

Aug 19, 2024

💵 Subscribers: Save $10 on Poynter’s Work-Life Chemistry course with code 24WorkLifeChem10.

Picture this: you’re at a workshop and you’re holding a bunch of eggs in each hand. On one side are your work responsibilities; on the other, tasks from your personal life. There’s an egg for getting groceries, picking up the kids, finding time to exercise.

And then, the leader of the workshop asks you about the last crisis you experienced. “That’s what this egg represents,” she says. “I’m going to throw it to you and you have to catch it.”

Splat.

Kristen Hare designed this exercise to illustrate the absurdity of “work-life balance” as a concept.

“This term doesn’t work for me because, how do you balance two things that are impossible to balance? I work more than I life,” Hare said. “This term meant I was always going to feel like I was behind, because I was unable to balance my work and my life.”

Instead, she came up with a new frame, using chemistry as the concept.

Introducing work-life chemistry

Instead of holding work and life separately, Hare suggests seeing how different elements work together for a more sustainable (and less madness-inducing) approach. This usually takes a three-part formula, made up of two elements representing choices you’ve made and one aspirational element.

“Nobody actually knows their formula until they go through the process,” Hare said. For example, she thought family would be one of her elements. But once she wrote down a list of what she had said yes or no to in her life and her work, she found she was choosing things that allowed her flexibility.

Your formula can and should change over time. Hare started out the year with this formula:

flexibility, creativity and peace

Now, however, she’s got a book coming out and her kids are getting ready to start college and high school. She’s changed it to:

flexibility, creativity and momentum

People can either examine their formulas at regular intervals, like performing routine car maintenance, or wait until the check engine light comes on and they’re feeling unsettled or unsatisfied to see what’s not working, Hare said. That’s where the aspirational element can come in, to focus on your intentions moving forward.

Making career choices

Hare has distilled the lessons from seven years of trainings into a six-week email course at nonprofit journalism support organization Poynter, where she is a faculty member. Earlier this year, she hosted a panel with three program alumni about how work-life chemistry has shifted how they approach career decisions. For example, Kristie May shared that after she went through the work-life chemistry training, a legacy organization tried poaching her from a startup:

“If I would have joined this organization, it would have robbed me of my flexibility, which is another pillar. It took me some time, and I was just like, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m still in my 20s, you don’t turn down legacy offers. But it just did not fit with my formula. And I know that I’m lucky and I’m privileged to be with NowKalamazoo where I feel like my publisher really appreciates the same … things that I appreciate.”

Hare herself used her formula to navigate a similar decision when she was offered a managing editor job at Poynter. While she would have loved the work, she also would have to drive three hours every day, destroying the flexibility she treasured in her life.

No matter what industry you’re in, it’s easy to get too focused on external definitions of career success instead of defining what success means for us as individuals, Hare said. Making decisions for your life is easier when you harness this internal guidance.

“I hear so often from people who have been through Work-Life Chemistry that their formula helped them make the choices that they made, and they were often choices in the opposite direction of where intentional career paths would take them,” Hare said. “Once you can identify what drives you, that tells you what brings you satisfaction and, hopefully, joy and fulfillment.”

Happy navigating,
Bridget