The myth of balance

This has become a very overrated approach to organizing your life. As any new parent will point out, your life isn’t really your to decide when you have a newborn. Finding any type of balance is difficult in a hypercharged capitalist society. The reality is that when you have free time, you will fill it. What you choose to fill it with is indeed essential. And no, we don’t get to do what we want all the time. A better approach is to understand what you are building toward. However, an even higher level is to seek a way of life that is satisfactory for living well, as you define it. The goals don’t matter. They change and evolve. Nothing wrong with having goals. The goal of going through medical school and becoming a doctor is important. But an MD at the end of your name doesn’t make you who you are. Make the goal align with you as an individual—the paths we take and the process by which we do it should be the goal (no pun intended).