We’ve talked before about defining success… now that we have an idea of what success means to us, how do we go about achieving it? If we want to focus on our career, can we have a personal life too? If we want to focus on family, can we still succeed in our jobs? Is it possible to “have it all”?
No: Simple economics tells us that we can’t. Like the graph below shows, every hour spent working is one hour less at home. It can be reasonably assumed that achieving professional success requires an enormous investment in time: an article about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers describes his theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to succeed at a given skill. “The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field.” Within business, many varied skills are necessary in order to climb the corporate ladder. For all the hours we spend working, networking, and honing our communication skills, our lives can easily start to revolve solely around our jobs. Given that there are a finite 24 hours in a day, we must make sacrifices if we want to be a CEO, or a doctor, or secret agent Ethan Hunt. Whether that means spending less time with friends, cutting back dates with a significant other, or taking fewer vacation days to visit family, we face tradeoffs.
Yes: While people do face tradeoffs, “having it all” is not a simple matter of time. Just as extra hours spent at work may not increase our productivity, extra hours spent at home may not improve our relationships. Economics only goes so far: we do have to make concessions with our time, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that success in our career and our personal life is mutually exclusive. Working fifteen hour days may leave us only with a few hours to ourselves, but we can accomplish a lot in a few hours. The quality of our time is far more important than simply having the time itself. Although we may need to put in extra effort to ensure that we are making the most of our spare moments with friends and family, this must be expected with the life we wish to lead. And in the beginning stages of our careers, true friends will understand that perhaps our jobs may come first.
In the end, I think the second graph is probably most accurate, as it is possible to fall along any area on this spectrum. While all of us would like to be in the first quadrant, it does take work and sacrifice. This sacrifice, however, is not choosing between your personal life and your job. Instead, it relates to prioritizing within our professional and personal lives: “having it all” is not the same as “doing it all.” With limits on our time, we may not always be able to do everything we want to do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that our work/relationships will suffer as a result.
Lastly, this past week on Grey’s Anatomy, we saw the overworked Dr. McDreamy land on the cover of a medical journal while keeping his romance alive with kidney-dropping Meredith. We also saw Michael and Holly consummate their relationship on The Office, bringing workplace romance back to Scranton. Thus, from the annals of fake hospitals and fake paper companies, these are just a few examples of intersecting professional and personal success stories. Given that I take all my cues from Thursday night TV, is it possible then to “have it all”? Clearly, yes.
