Why I Aim for Balance but Don't Expect It
Welcome to The Milan Letters. If you’re new here, my name is Diego Milan. By day, I’m a business strategist who’s consulted 300+ businesses across industries, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. By night, I’m a voracious reader with wide-ranging tastes.
I started this newsletter as an outlet to share what I’m learning, from books, travel, work, conversations, and whatever I’m wrestling with.
Each week, I share what’s caught my attention: one quote that’s impacted me, one reflection I’m sitting with, and one good find I think you’ll enjoy. Thanks for reading.
Favorite quote of the week:
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
— Paul Kalanithi, author of When Breath Becomes Air
Something worth thinking about:
We all have buckets in our lives that we’re constantly trying to keep full. One bucket is for our health, another for our work, relationships, creative projects, and fun.
Whenever I take a trip abroad, I’m faced with the reality that they’ll never all be filled at once.
For instance, I landed back home from London last night after two weeks in Europe. As I write this, my relationship feels great. I had an opportunity to brainstorm for my creative projects during the quiet transit time between cities. Besides great food and beautiful landmarks, I got to check out a few museums that left me feeling inspired. Overall, I had quite a bit of fun and feel refreshed.
Yet my inbox is full of unanswered client requests. I had dessert almost every night while wandering the narrow European streets (never once touching a dumbbell while abroad). And I’ve got days of playing catch-up ahead of me.
Right now, some of my life buckets are practically overflowing with energy, while others look quite neglected.
As much as I aim for balance (as I wrote last week, I try to prioritize equilibrium), it seems that whenever I’m thriving in one area of my life, another area suffers.
Keeping clients happy sometimes means temporarily having an unhappy partner and a neglected gym routine. Lots of fun, travel, and exploration can sometimes mean falling a bit behind on a few deadlines. And on and on.
I’ve come to view perfect, total balance as a worthy, but impossible goal. Because there are always tradeoffs in life.
In the same way you cannot physically be in two places at once, you cannot focus entirely on two tasks at the same time. I cannot write this letter while simultaneously responding to a client email. I cannot go to the gym while intensely studying a course. I cannot wander through a museum, fully taking in the works of art, while on the phone with a business partner.
Embracing this reality of unavoidable tradeoffs has created a new kind of peace for me. I no longer feel behind because I’m not operating at 100% in all areas of my life. I’ve accepted that directing my focus inevitably means shifting attention away from something (or someone) else.
Now, am I saying it’s impossible to multitask? No, I’m not.
You can go for a walk with your spouse and technically fill your health and relationships buckets at the same time. And you can respond to clients and colleagues in the morning before you head out to explore a new city (as I’ve done before).
But there will always be periods in your life when you must prioritize your attention to one bucket over another. The first few years of launching a business or creative project will take up the majority of your evenings and weekends. Picking up a new hobby may eat into your reading time, just as a new gym routine and diet may take away from something else.
As you prioritize some buckets, others will inevitably empty, and that’s okay. Striving for balance in your life doesn’t mean you need to perfectly have everything under control. Some things may fall through the cracks. Some people may be disappointed. Some streaks may be broken.
The key is to cultivate the art of prioritization: intuitively recognizing what’s truly important and shifting your attention between buckets as they fill and empty. (A good rule of thumb, when in doubt, is that your health and relationships should always be priority, in that order.)
Learn to be comfortable with imperfection and “good enough,” especially when you’re juggling so much at once.
The truth is that it’s not easy to be a perfect friend and partner, stay on top of your personal studies, climb a corporate ladder or build a business, tinker with creative projects, and maintain your health while making time for fun.
Give yourself grace as you strive to maintain so many areas of your life at once. Be comfortable when not every one of those areas is entirely under control. They never will be.
In striving to give your attention to each of those important areas of your life, you’ll create something that resembles balance. And that’s as close as we can get to feeling fully on top of things.
One good find worth your time:
I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation between Henry Oliver and Jared Henderson. As my reading interests keep expanding, this interview gave me a lot to think about on how I read and how I’m cultivating my taste.
Until next time,
Diego