Work–Life Balance: Hopeless Endeavor or Rather, a True Privilege?

When I agreed to write this opinion piece onwork–life balance, I quickly added it tomy office whiteboard to-do list: “Work-Life Balance –October.” These fourwords generatedmuchdiscussion – from jokes about the short timetable that I have to achieve the perfect work–life balance to conversations about how we are all trying to find work–life balance. As a female academic intensivist and both an ICU director and program director, I am constantly surrounded by trainees and intensivists. Even before the whiteboard conversation piece, work–life balance was a frequent topic of conversation. Point is – we all want work–life balance and think it is the key to our happiness, but the idea of it can somehow create more stress and anxiety. In fact, if you have thought too hard about it and whether or not you have it, you likely are feeling like a failure. Like most physicians, I do not like feeling like a failure so instead I now think of it more like this: it is a privilege to have a fulfilling career, but that does not for a second lessen the importance of my personal life and the people that I care about. Though work–life balance seems to be a goal for so many, most cannot even agree on the definition. Wikipedia defines it as proper prioritizing between “work” (career and ambition) and “lifestyle” (health, pleasure, leisure, family, and spiritual development/meditation). When I ask my physician friends how they define work–life balance, to some it means having enough time to fulfill all of your work and home responsibilities and to be able to prioritize the important events in both domains. In short – be where you need to be and do what matters the most to you on a given day. For others, it means separating your work life from your home life so that neither really interferes with the other on a regular basis because they should indeed be separate entities. Yet another friend jokes that itmeans thatwork and life have equal importance and influence but speaking for herself, she has too much life and too much work so that the scale, while balanced, has actually broken. All the definitions seem flawed and set us up for failure because there are often not enough hours in the day for all the people that want or need us, whether it is our family, friends, patients, or colleagues. As academic physicians, I see no way of advancing our careers and keeping work and life completely separate. And no one wants to feel that work and life are balanced but that they are being pushed to the limit. So, are we talking about a hopeless endeavor to even strive for work–life balance? The work–life balance debate also undoubtedly becomes an emotional one because it is one of those topics that force us to put our core values into conflict. It makes us feel that we have to choose one core value (perhaps our dedication to our loved ones and even ourselves) over another (our ambition to make our mark in this world and advance our careers while helping others). Almost everyone, when asked, would say that nothing is more important to them than their family and friends. It is controversial to say or think otherwise but yet as academic physicians, there is little doubt that our careers are also incredibly important to us. Work is often stimulating, inspiring, fulfilling, and where we spend much of our time. Many of us are doing it partially to support our families but regardless, work in academic medicine does give