Let’s talk about balance. When I speak to prospective applicants to podiatry, one of the benefits of the profession I cite is the improved work-life balance in comparison to other physician-defined professions. Now, this may be true when comparing podiatry to certain other medical professions, but is a good overall work-life balance something that can actually be achieved

I don’t think so.

There’s a give and take in life, and time is a finite commodity. There’s only so much time available to accomplish everything we want. When most of us go to work we, by necessity, stop seeing our families. When we focus more on our families, we reduce the productivity of some part of work.

Even right now, it’s 9:11PM on a Saturday as I write this. I could be spending time with my wife, but I need to complete writing this editorial. I “balanced” my time with my kids earlier in the evening by spending time with them before they went to bed, and then started writing this editorial afterward. I happen to have a very understanding wife who knows writing is an important part of who I am and gives me the leeway to do what I must. In fact, I tend to work a lot, while trying to balance those things that are most important and often fail.

I’m not unique or special in any way as far as this sense of balance goes. Most healthcare professionals know exactly what I’m talking about. Going through medical school, for example, requires the donation of an inordinate amount of time, most of it away from our families, stopping hobbies we previously loved. In fact, most human beings know what I’m talking about. I work with wonderful people at Western University, many of whom, not themselves healthcare providers, are dedicated to something bigger than themselves, spending time away from their families, understanding the price of building and running a college. They also make efforts to “balance” their lives.

What I find almost laughable is the belief that we can balance the personal and the professional. Ask any working woman, for example. Our culture has an expectation that a woman will do her job to 100% effectiveness and then go home and do the same for her family. Without a good personal support network, it’s not possible

Look on the Internet for the massive number of blogs that purport to advise us on how to strike an effective life balance. A quick search found a blog imparting physicians with eight tips “To Keep A Better Work-Life Balance”¹:

These are all very nice on the face of it. Who doesn’t want to take breaks? Of course, we should take breaks. We should always “be present” and conscious of what goes on around us. This advice is blue sky and hypothetical - naive and overall ridiculous. In fact, the author, according to her online profile is (as of September 2017) a graduate assistant in the department of sociology at the University of California Davis. She is not a medical provider of any stripe and can’t know the first thing about what it is to be someone who has to balance being a doctor, teacher, student, business owner, parent, and/or spouse all at the same time.

For a medical student studying hard to become a podiatric physician “scheduling personal time” may be impossible. For a physician recently graduated from residency, working hard to build a new practice, “adjusting your time on call” may come with an “adjust your income level” that makes affording that beautiful new family that much harder. I laugh when someone tells me to work less because my patients’ diseases won’t wait for that appointment two weeks from now. As one of my preceptors said when I was a student about to start a surgical procedure at 12PM on a Saturday when I could have been with my family, “Pus doesn’t take a holiday.”

You see, each of our decisions is on a scale. More work to accomplish that research study or take extra call tips the scale toward work and away from family. Want to start working four days a week to be home for that new baby? Get ready to lose income. That scale is an ugly reality. If you want to accomplish something important in your life, something must give.

Sounds bad, I know. If we can accept the reality and focus our attentions on maximizing whatever balance we can, we’ll find ourselves coming ever closer to that hypothetical balance everyone’s talking about. Here’s how to really achieve balance in life, coming from someone who hasn’t figured it all out just yet:

Finally, since we’re talking about a Zen-like acceptance that you can’t have it all, take a moment and reflect on truly understanding where that closest-to-middle-road is for you. Career or family/personal, neither is wrong or right. It’s up to you. But be aware something must give, at least to some degree. What you choose to focus on is up to you, and I’m certain that with some thought and planning happiness will follow, even if balance does not.