An excellent idea by Stacey Abrams, the powerhouse behind fighting against voter suppression tactics in Georgia, USA.
The term “Work-Life Balance” is irrelevant for many today. When work is life, and life is work, and there are many layers in between, everything dissolves into a single solution. You.
The only challenge is balancing the various blocks.
I reject the idea of work-life balance. The phrase is a bald-faced lie, designed to hang over the human psyche like the Sword of Damocles, because balance presumes an even distribution of weight, of value. But anyone who has ever lived understands that no set of tips or tricks can create a lifestyle equilibrium. The relentless pursuit of this unachievable end results in hours of self-loathing and diminished quality in the time that we spend in pursuit of either work or life.
Instead, I believe in work-life Jenga. You know, the game where you stack up these seemingly equal-size blocks to form a perfect tower and then proceed to pull them out one by one, restacking as you go along. The goal is to make as many moves as possible without destroying the tower, even as it sways and lists. So too, in work-life Jenga, the expectation is not one of balance; it’s one of strategy and of making the best of each move, one block at a time.
Stacey ABRAMS, political leader and author
