Does it really have to be this way?

Lately I’ve been thinking (somewhere in a continuum between daydreaming and plotting) about creative ways I might be able to spend more time in both my beloved city of Paris AND my beloved city of Sydney… how to spend time here with family and dear friends, keep working, AND enjoy la vie parisienne, which makes me feel so happy and alive in a way that’s hard to put into words but which is nonetheless very important to me

It all sounds a bit like “wanting to have my cake and eat it too” doesn’t it? That saying has always struck me as bizarre. Why wouldn’t you want to eat the cake, if you have it? Sure, whatever crazy plan I come up with will involve trade-offs and opportunity costs in some form or another. But what doesn’t?

Going through an exercise like this also reminds me of how easily we can tend to accept various structures and ways of working and living as fixed and immutable when in fact they can be changed and adapted surprisingly easily. All it really takes is seeing them for what they are – habits, conventions, traditions – rather than the laws of nature we can unconsciously assume them to be.

Think about remote working. For many people this was pretty much unimaginable until Covid suddenly made it the norm ( ok, annoyingly, it’s still a bridge too far for some people).

Have a look around your work and your life. Where are there things you’ve been accepting or tolerating that actually don’t work for you? That make you unhappy?

Perhaps it’s the assumption that your partner’s work is centred while yours fits in around the demands of family life. Perhaps it’s the idea that you need to work yourself to the point of exhaustion to be considered committed to your job. Perhaps it’s simply the unconscious, everyday patterns in how you prioritise your time, energy and money.

I’m not saying all these assumptions and patterns are necessarily wrong (well maybe I am when it comes to the automatic centring of men’s careers at the expense of women’s) or that you need to upend your life or foment revolution. But I am saying that these are constructs, not laws of physics, and that it can be fruitful or even liberating to subject them to a little scrutiny. Ask: Is it possible this doesn’t have to be this way? If it didn’t, what else could become possible? Or more simply: why am I tolerating this crap when I don’t have to?

Don’t tolerate crap you don’t have to.

Until next week,

Madeleine

I help accomplished professionals untangle difficult career questions so they can thrive in work and life.

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