Monday Motivator #15 2018-19

From Balance to Beats
https://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=3061

 

Work-life balance sets an unrealistic expectation of keeping different roles in steady equilibrium. Instead, strive for work-life rhythm. Each week has a repeating pattern of beats—job, family, friends, health, hobbies—that vary in accent and duration.

                                                                               Adam Grant

When I was a teenager, I played clarinet and met weekly with a private instructor.  But after the school year was over, we stopped poring over sheet music and practicing scales and long tones. Summers were given over to jazz. Within certain rhythms or a range of sounds, almost anything was possible. It took a lot of effort and it was sometimes frustrating to improvise after nine months of exacting attention to getting what was on the page exactly right. But I learned that it was also fun to try to invent new melodies within the constraints of keys and timing.

I spent too much of my life thinking about how to live a “balanced” life, charting out schedules and trying to slot in time for myself. I’ve finally learned a good life isn’t about balance, but beats. The beats that matter most -- family, writing, work, volunteering -- recur on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Certain beats are much more prominent in some days and weeks than others. But it’s all about improvisation -- finding a rhythm and melody that works for a while, and then disappears when a new rhythm emerges.

What are the beats in your life? What’s most prominent now? Sometimes life is all about strong, overwhelming beats of family (with a new baby) or writing (with a new book) or career (with a switch to a new school). Your life might not feel in any way balanced, but the melody can still be sweet.

Brenda Power
Founder, Choice Literacy