Balancing Work and Life

"Be Present. Be Absent. But Not Both."

I love that quote. I first heard it in a leadership training program earlier in my career. It was shared on the first day of a year-long cohort-style leadership program as one of our shared agreements for the group. It recognized that, as leaders, things come up – work things, life things… distractions happen, and that’s okay. What isn’t okay is pretending to be engaged with the group when your attention is elsewhere. The idea was simple: if something needs your focus, step away, handle it, and then return. The group will be here when you come back. Give your attention to what needs it, completely. You’ll likely do better, respond faster, etc., then be fully present when you get back.

That agreement stuck with me because it was more than a ground rule. It was a mindset shift.

We all know it’s impossible to be in two places at once – physically, that is. But mentally? Emotionally? We convince ourselves we can do it all the time. It’s the myth of multitasking, but that’s a topic for another day.

What if, instead of pretending to be here while your mind is there, just be here. Trust that there will still be there when you get to it. And if you choose to be there, what’s here can wait until you’re ready to return. Either way, they’ll both get done.

What does this have to do with work-life balance, you ask?

We tend to view work in a similar here-or-there binary – even in the language we use to talk about it: work-life balance. We are at work, or we aren’t, as if work and life are two sides of a scale that we’re constantly trying to even out.

We also sometimes frame balance as though it’s something we can eventually achieve once the inbox is cleared, the project is wrapped up, or that one big deadline passes. It’s seen as prospective, a state we’ll reach after we finish this one thing. The problem is, there’s always another thing. Another task, another demand, another reason to delay rest or connection.

But what if balance isn’t about space, or time management, something we earn or having it all? What if it’s about presence?

What this quote says to me is when our body is in one space and our mind is somewhere else entirely, that’s where imbalance really begins. As a result, balance becomes a moving target.

For years, I lived that imbalance without realizing it. I was constantly chasing that target.

When I owned my own accounting firm, I was always mentally on call. My husband was a stay-at-home parent at the time, which created an invisible pressure: since he managed the home stuff, I felt it was my job to manage the stability of everything else. I had to be vigilant. I believed that I had to be “on” all the time to ensure our financial security. I carried the weight of that, believing that as long as I kept producing, everything would stay steady. Our life would be balanced.

It didn’t start out this way. When I started my firm, my intention was to build a practice where I didn’t have to choose between work and life. We started our family when I started my practice, with the intention of creating a firm that would be an integral part of my lifestyle. I’d pick up the kids from school. I’d coach soccer practice. I’d take Taekwondo classes, too. But as my practice grew, so did the pressure. Over time, those things quietly stopped. I didn’t give myself permission to let go of work, especially since my husband had the ‘life’ stuff covered.

Balance is About Energy, Not Time

The truth is, balance has less to do with managing our time and more to do with managing our energy. Time is the new currency. It’s fixed. Energy is renewable. Energy is how we create value from time. You can’t add more hours, but you can change the quality of what happens inside them.

Our thoughts, our energy, our sense of presence – it doesn’t have two sides: the work side and the not-at-work side. In fact, that framing suggests there are only 2 parts. I don’t know about you, but I see life as far more complex, nuanced and beautiful. More like a kaleidoscope. Shifting, changing, responding to light, movement. Each turn is simply a realignment - same pieces, different picture, always beautiful.

We talk about “work life” and “personal life” as if they exist in separate lanes. But they don’t. There’s just life – and leadership lives in the middle of all of it. We bring all of ourselves everywhere we go. All the pieces of ourselves simply shift, adapting to the moment. The person who leads the meeting is the same one who goes home to family, dinner with friends, a meet-up with colleagues at a conference.

My energy wheel captures this idea. Instead of thinking in terms of “work” and “life,” it helps me see energy across six domains:

1. Work, career & professional impact

2. Family & relationships

3. Play, leisure & creativity

4. Health & personal well-being

5. Social & community life

6. Spirituality, meaning & purpose

They’re not separate compartments; they’re connected systems that make up our whole self. And each domain draws our energy and asks for our attention. When one area is depleted, the others feel it. When one area needs more, we shift. When one area gets a boost, it flows to the other domains.

It is when we try to separate these spaces, where we are in one or the other – when work spills into our personal time or personal matters creep into our workday – that those mismatched moments create speedbumps. Energy doesn’t flow smoothly. A call or text about something that happened at school could feel like an interruption, but answering work emails at night feels like a commitment. The truth is, both are intrusions. Both draw energy from somewhere else. The only difference is the story we tell ourselves about which one matters more.

That’s why presence is so powerful. Balance isn’t about control – it’s about awareness. Being present doesn’t mean everything is perfectly in balance; it means we’re fully where we are, giving our attention, energy, and emotion to the moment at hand. When we do that, balance stops being a finish line, or something we “get right” so that we can “have it all.” It becomes a practice of alignment where, moment by moment, we choose to be present or to be absent, instead of trying to be both.