Forget about balance, focus on flow
I spent a lot of time trying to create balance between the work I do and the life I live. The harder I tried for this mythical state, the less inspired I felt. It’s only when I let go of the need to find this impossible harmony that I discovered my essential nature, and found myself in true creative flow.
As a kid, one of my favorite pastimes was writing and directing plays for the neighborhood kids to perform. I always did my homework, joined (and usually became the leader of) every club and held down a part-time job: not because anyone forced me, but because I enjoyed engaging with my school and community. As an adult employee, and then as a business owner, I’ve given every role my all. I love the feeling of building something. I like full days, with lots to accomplish. Want to know what freaks me out? An afternoon nap, or an hour without something to do.
Now, I’ve learned that no matter how passionate you are about what you’re doing, no one can work all the time, and after several years of relentless toil while I built my production company and made documentary films, I started to feel burned out. And so I tried to figure out ways to achieve that all-elusive thing we call “work-life balance”.
The term, I quickly came to realize, is a loaded one. Google it and you’ll find hundreds of preachy, prescriptive articles with recommendations about what to have on your desk, how to decorate your bedroom, ways to divide your time, regulations for social media usage and e-mail checking.
Very quickly, the pursuit of work-life balance began to feel like a trap. As a creative person and someone who finds pleasure and purpose in work, I realized the more I tried to cultivate and maintain this nebulous idea of balance, the less inspired I felt in my business, in my creativity and even in my personal life.
I don’t ascribe to the tortured genius school of art. But I do believe that creating important and meaningful stuff takes work. Really hard work. Tons of it, often without recognition or encouragement for a long, long time. You have to get up early, and stay up late. You have to hustle on the weekends when your competition is out at brunch. You need to constantly stoke your creative fire with knowledge. You have to challenge yourself to become better, richer and more original in how you express your vision.
And yes, within all that you have to take care of yourself. It’s part of the work, but it’s not necessarily “balance”, with its connotation of some perfectly proportioned schedule in which different aspects of your life have the exact same measure and weight.
Sometimes for me, an hour of yoga is enough to even out the pressure of a week of 12-hour shoots. A few mornings of reading the paper and writing in my journal over breakfast is really awesome, but other days I wake up and just want to get to my desk and get shit done. The self-help gurus might tisk tisk at me for not sticking to my morning routine, but what is creativity if not finding ways to break free of restrictive ways of thinking, living and working?
If you don’t believe me, take it from a true self-help guru and all around inspirational woman, Danielle Laporte, who introduced me to the idea that balance is bullshit, and liberated me from the fruitless quest to achieve it:
“If you want to do great things, striving for balance is a losing game. I don’t think remarkable artists, scientists, activists, entrepreneurs, or generous souls set out on their giving journeys with the aim to be measured and harmonious. Meeting your potential is inherently full of tension (creative tension.) Trying to be balanced about it is onerous and futile.”
I couldn’t agree more. For a long time, I was scared of the tension that comes from the dogged pursuit of what you love; the highs and lows, the doubts and uncertainties, the sacrifices and compromises it takes to get there. Now I’ve realized that the tension is the most essential part of the process. The surefire way to kill it? Smother it with balance.
I’ve also discovered that as soon as you give up on the futile search for balance, you open up space for a far more meaningful creative existence, that includes…
Passion
Think of a time in your life when you were really in love with something: it could be a person, a place, a piece of art. Did you feel balanced and even-keeled about it, or did you feel BIG, CRAZY passion for it? The kind that makes you put a song on repeat for an hour until every note is burned on your brain, the passion that makes you visit a place every time you have a spare moment just because it feels so darn good to be there.
My favorite times in life are when something stirs up my passion and makes me feel like I JUST CAN’T STOP. When I feel this as part of my creative process, it’s the best feeling I could ever imagine. Better than really amazing sex followed by salted caramel ice cream kind of great. I encourage you to stop worrying about balance, make room for passion, and see where the feeling takes you creatively.
Focus
The search for balance made me feel this weird pressure to take time away from what felt most important in my life. I found myself agreeing to take trips that I didn’t really want to be on, or signing up for classes I didn’t really want to take, because I thought the activities would provide some “respite” from my work.
Instead, I ended up dreading the time away, then I felt guilty for dreading it, and then I came back to my work distracted, my energy and enthusiasm diminished. For a while, I thought the problem was with the work, but I soon realized it was the quest for balance making me say yes to a whole bunch of crap that was not core to my creative purpose.
Now that I’ve let that go, I’m able to focus on what I really want to spend my time doing, which is making three important and interesting documentary films; nurturing my personal and professional community in LA; and writing. I’ve never felt more clear and focused on how I want to spend my time, and my time has never felt more purposeful and rewarding.
Flow
This is the greatest state of being for any creative. Flow is when you’re utterly immersed in the art you’re making; when the whole world slips away and you forget there’s anything other than your project. Artists in flow will describe working for hours, forgetting their basic bodily needs, not even noticing that they need a bathroom break because they are so caught up in this state. It’s hypnotic, meditative, almost a holy state of being for an artist.
And yet, flow is a fickle mistress; you find yourself in it without necessarily knowing how you got there, and it can slip through your grasp as quickly as it arrived.
I’ve been finding myself in creative flow a lot lately, disappearing into what I’m doing as my brain whirs with inspiration. I believe that’s because I’ve created space for this to happen. Giving up on the quest for balance gave me the opportunity to open the door and welcome flow in, assuring it that I’m prepared to roll up my sleeves and do the work. These days, flow and I are spending a lot of time being completely unbalanced together.
I’m curious to hear what other creatives out there think. Do you believe that being an artist and finding balance can go together or like me, have you found that a creative life is often an all-consuming life?
For more of my life and work, visit longhaulfilms.com, restartingthemotorcity.com and lettinggoofadele.com
