As always, James Clear’s (author of Atomic Habits) newsletter delivers on wisdom. In his latest one, he talked about balance. This was a theme that was a big part of my introspection last year, and he shared it in a way that helped me right some incongruence:

Balance is timing, not intensity.

It is not doing multiple tasks at 80%, but developing the skill of turning it on and turning it off.

Sleep fully, then work intensely. Focus deeply, then relax completely. Give each phase your full attention.

Balance is ‘when to’ not ‘how to.’

The difficulty I had was how to achieve balance in work and in life, when there’s so much to do and you’re spread out so thin. It feels like a catch-22: if you’re too focused and intense about one thing, you lose balance because you ignore other important parts of your life. If you try to balance by giving attention to all the different aspects of what makes a full life, you risk spreading yourself out too thin, and not really digging deep enough to benefit in it, or even enjoy it.

But he points out a third way. A way to both have balance with depth as well as with breadth. That flicked off a lightbulb, ‘aha’ moment for me. Of course! It’s not about how much time I spent, not about the raw quantity of time, but the quality of attention and attachment I bring to it. 

The problem had always been the cognitive lag in context switching. If you’re running around doing things in different contexts everyday, it’s hard to be fully present because it takes time for your mind to wind down before it ramps up again to the next task, conversation, or environment. But if you can train yourself to be fully present, and to fully let go before moving to the next engagement (where you go full presence again), then there’s no lag, there’s no baggage brought over, no lingering thoughts from before, no absence. 

That is exactly the practice of mindfulness. Just complete presence, from one moment to the next, from one context to another, bringing nothing along. Breathing and just abiding in that breath. In. Out. Deep. Slow.

And to think I’d been practising mindfulness for some years! Still an apprentice, despite.