A See-Saw in the Ivory Tower: Why 'Balance' May be Holding you Back

When talking about work-life balance, and I use the word “balance” loosely, we often focus on time-management, goal-setting, boundary setting, self-care, social support, and health resources. All these are important aspects of a life well-lived, but they ignore the fundamental building block to all of them: self-knowledge. We cannot know what boundaries/goals to set and what self-care/social support we need unless we take a step back to better understand ourselves. Academics, who often seem to know everything, may, in fact, know nothing about their best self—the person who is truly happy in their life. Because academia is structured as a putatively transparent (in terms of titles and teaching hours, etc.) hierarchy, the urge and the ease to compare is ever-present, and the notion of balance, however defined, is always out-of-reach. In this roundtable talk, I present the metaphors we use to talk about ‘balance’ and ask participants if this type of ‘balance’ is what they are seeking. I next ask participants to identify their strengths and in which contexts their strengths are used most easily. Lastly, I take them through an exercise to envision their best self so that they can refer to this when they are making choices about their goals and boundaries.