"Work, sleep, family, fitness, or friends--pick three. It's true. In order to kick ass and do big things, I think you have to be imbalanced."
-Jon Crawford
Now that you're a working woman with a demanding job, time will become your most valuable resource and a luxury that you’ll find is constantly in short supply. You'll wrestle with how you can possibly share it with everyone: your bosses, who will always want more from you (yes, even on weekends), your family and friends, who are a source of invaluable community and support, and, perhaps most important but oft-forgotten, yourself.
It’s the age-old question of work-life balance, the ubiquitous Catch Twenty-Two that keeps "Having it All" out of reach and on the front page of every women's publication in circulation.
So what can you do about it?
1. Recognize that you don’t have to be everything to everyone all the time. Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent a few years being the primary caretaker for her children as her husband aimed for partnership at a law firm. And then, for many years after, her husband became their household's primary chef.
It's about balance, not daily but over the years. The reality of a demanding job is that there will be some weeks or months when you have a deal or a project that requires nearly everything from you, times when you can’t go home and cook, or even meet friends for drinks on a Friday. On the other hand, there will be some weeks when work is really manageable, even slow. During those weeks, you will have the time to work out more, meet friends and date and it's absolutely vital that you recognize and seize those moments.
The bottom line is that you don’t always have to be super wife/gf/mom/friend everyday and you can't be a super worker all the time, either. There can and will be days or periods of time when you put more effort into one element of your life relative to the others, and that’s ok. "Having it all" can and should be calculated across our lifetimes, not each day.
2. Find something that means a lot to you and make it non-negotiable. There was a female partner at my former large corporate law firm who made dancing her thing. Every Saturday night, when the dust from multibillion deals had often settled (at least momentarily), she blocked off time to let her hair down and shake it off.
Your thing can be anything that you enjoy, or brings you closer to your ideal self. It can be time at the gym (I knew a senior associate turned partner who managed to do the unthinkable and went to the gym at 4pm everyday), time spent outdoors with your kids, Sunday brunch with the girls. If there’s an event or activity that means a lot to you, block it off and make that time non-negotiable.
And obviously, while I encourage you to think creatively in creating space for yourself, exercise a bit of caution--your non-negotiable has to be reasonable and compatible with your profession and, at least early in your career, with the schedules of your immediate superiors. For instance, turning up at work at 11am every morning because your appointed gym time is at 9am simply won't work if your boss is an early bird. But rather than giving it up entirely, find a compromise: perhaps sign up instead for the hot yoga class on Wednesday nights.
3. Make your job work for you. This was one of the best pieces of advice that a female and extremely well respected senior associate once gave me. Only you know where your boundaries are and what you can and will invest in your job. If you dance to the tune of other people all the time, you’ll get burnt out and then what? At least when you make your job work for you, you can survive a bit longer and eventually, rise.
4. Ain't Nobody Got Time for That. Let’s be honest, you don’t have time for nonsense. That means you don’t have time to waste on faux-friends, waiting around, turning up for every event, bad dates. I can go on and on. Choose the friends who matter to you, and who are great sources of support, and invest the time to cultivate those relationships. You simply can’t attend every wedding, every drinks night, every brunch--so choose the ones that you actually want to show up for and don’t feel guilty for those you don't. I can’t tell you the number of social events I attended because I felt like I “had to” and they turned out to be exhausting and did nothing for me emotionally, spiritually or any type of "-ly."
Time will fly by and so will your life. As a young career woman, your early years matter a lot, so make them count. You deserve it.