Work-Work Balance: What if balance isn’t about doing less?
A few months ago, I gave a talk about something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: the Work-Work Balance.
Yes, work-work. Not work-life.
We spend a lot of time talking about work-life balance and for good reason. You see it everywhere online where not only creative marketers but professionals of all kinds are feeling run into the ground. What I’m not seeing a lot of is how meaningful work can counteract it.
For me, there’s the work of running Artfully. There’s also writing, speaking, making art, teaching, experimenting and all of the other creative pursuits that don’t fit neatly into my day-to-day job description. They’re still work. Some make money, some might eventually make money, and some simply make me better at everything else I do.
And I know I’m not alone in that.
What is the Work-Work Balance?
The idea is pretty simple: many of us are balancing more than a career and a personal life. We’re balancing multiple streams of work that matter to us.
During my talk, I asked everyone to think about their work in two streams.
Your primary work stream is the obvious one: your career, profession, business or primary role.
Your secondary work stream is the other work you’re building alongside it. Maybe it’s a side business. Teaching fitness classes. Writing a book. Creating content. Volunteering in a role that develops skills you want to use professionally. Building toward the next step in your career.
The point isn't that everyone needs a side hustle. And please, for the love of all things holy, we do not need another reason to monetize every waking hour of our lives.
The point is recognizing that some of the things competing for our time and energy aren't distractions from the “real work”. They are part of the real work.
Tasks vs. Practice
This is where the idea gets particularly important to me.
There are tasks, and then there is your practice.
Tasks are the things that need to get done: answer the email, finish the deck, send the invoice, update the website, schedule the meeting.
Practice is bigger.
It's designing. Writing. Leading. Teaching. Building. Making. Whatever the thing is that you want to continue getting better at over the course of your life.
When we're overwhelmed, tasks have a tendency to eat practice alive. They're urgent. They're measurable. And there is always another one waiting.
Work-Work Balance asks us to make room for both.
Practice Gives Back
Here’s the perspective shift: not all work takes energy from us, some work gives it back.
Tasks tend to be energy consumers. Even when they’re necessary or productive, checking things off a list doesn’t always leave us feeling particularly energized by the end of the day.
Practice can be different.
The work that feels connected to your practice can actually be an energizer. It reminds you why you chose to do this in the first place. And while making space for more work might sound like a strange response to feeling burned out by work, sometimes the thing we need isn't necessarily less. It's a different relationship to what we're doing.
That distinction has changed the way I think about my own energy.
I talk a lot about resistance: that feeling when you know there is something you need or want to do, but you're spending an incredible amount of energy avoiding actually doing it. Thinking about the email instead of sending it. Dreading the project instead of starting it. Carrying something around mentally for three days that might take 30 minutes to finish.
Resistance takes energy.
And energy is the most valuable resource we have.
We tend to manage our lives around time. Do I have enough hours? Where can I fit this in? But an open hour isn't particularly useful if you have nothing left to give. Work-Work Balance has made me much more interested in managing energy instead.
That means noticing what drains it, what restores it and, perhaps most importantly, where I'm wasting it by staying in a state of resistance.
The goal isn't to cram more into an already full life. It's about becoming more intentional about the work we're giving our energy to and making sure some of that work gives something back.
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