Why “balance” is a luxury currency, and how to mint a little of it for yourself.
I was on holiday recently and, walking past some folk chatting, I heard one utter the following phrase casually “I don’t see why now, I have the same amount of time as you…” I walked on, not interested in hearing one person diminish anotwhile they’re trying to relax. But it did remind of of this quote;
“We all have the same 24 hours.”
— Internet meme popularised (and swiftly dragged) not even 5 years ago
The quote above, almost 5 years old now, should have shrivelled on the Vine (Sorry, couldn’t resist). But versions of it are constantly doing the rounds today, but in a much more refined form. The new versions aim to tell you you have the same opporuntities that the author does, and that that means you can either achieve what they claim to have achieved, or you’re failing. (I say claim here because, let’s face it, online these days it’s hard to believe anything)
It sounds empowering until you scratch the surface. I grew up with little in rural Northern Ireland, pre‑smartphone and pre‑Instagram. We didn’t know what we didn’t have—and that ignorance was relative bliss.
Today, social feeds drip‑feed us highlight reels of hustle culture, making imbalance impossible to miss. When people look at me now—a middle‑aged white man in the UK—they assume I’m born with the cheat codes. They’re not entirely wrong. I own privileges that money can’t buy retroactively: the confidence to spot opportunity, the psychological safety to take calculated risks, the freedom (most days) to pick how I spend my hours.
Yet privilege is a hydra with many heads. Parenthood, education, health, even a sense of emotional security—all tilt the scales of “balance.” Sometimes what looks like someone’s lucky break is simply the product of preparation plus conditions they never had to fight for.
I don’t claim to have universal answers—only a viewpoint shaped by my own path. What resonates for me may not fit your circumstances. Still, I feel compelled to call out the insidious messaging that clogs our timelines: polished influencers who sell hustle as virtue and frame every stumble as personal failure. Their algorithmic highlight reels mask structural hurdles and monetise our insecurity. If something here helps you, keep it; if not, discard it guilt‑free.
Privilege and the Clock
| Privilege “capital” | How it buys hours | Real‑world ripple |
|---|---|---|
| Money | Outsources chores, skips queues, hires expertise | CEO’s grocery delivery vs. shift worker’s bus + cooking marathon |
| Gender & unpaid care | Globally, women average 4 h 25 m/day of unpaid care vs. men’s 1 h 23 m (OECD) | The single mum’s second shift |
| Parenthood vs. child‑free | Kids teach empathy & purpose—but devour calendar blocks | Child‑free friends put in night classes while you’re at bedtime stories |
| Education & networks | Signals competence, opens doors earlier | Alumni job referral instead of blind CV drop |
| Psychological safety | Confidence to say yes before you’re “ready” | Trying, failing, iterating without fear of eviction |
Time poverty is real: if your discretionary hours are chewed up by survival, “work‑life balance” is a boutique product you can’t afford.
“Time is a feminist issue; how women spend it—and who controls it—shapes inequality.” — Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed
Personal note: As a parent, I will never regret the days I spent at home with my family—I’ll only regret that there weren’t enough of them. For years I placed a self‑imposed demand on myself to be permanently available and indispensable at work, terrified of not being needed. In reality, I was needed at home—both for my own wellbeing and so my wife wouldn’t always have to be the one there. I reflect on this in more depth elsewhere, but it’s a clear example of where my balance was wrong.
The Quality of Free Time
Even when two people each have four “free” hours after work, the actual usefulness of those hours can be worlds apart. If you’re struggling mentally, a 15‑minute chore—like doing the dishes—can drain what’s left of your energy for the night.
| Variable | Why it matters | Quick example |
|---|---|---|
| Energy & physical health | Fatigue‑soaked evening hours ≠ freshly caffeinated morning hours | Nurse finishing a night shift vs. remote worker starting the day |
| Cognitive load | Rumination over bills or family drama eats mental RAM | Parent juggling school debt during online class |
| Environment & distractions | Noise, cramped space, or lack of childcare fracture focus | Studying in a crowded flat‑share vs. a quiet home office |
| Digital friction | Slow internet or dated hardware throttles productivity | Uploading a portfolio on 3G vs. gig‑speed fibre |
| Skills & self‑management | Task‑chunking and goal‑setting multiply returns | Designer using Pomodoro squeezes more output |
| Purpose & direction | Clear goals channel effort; aimlessness dilutes it | Aspiring author outlining a chapter vs. vague “I should read” |
| Social & emotional support | Encouragement keeps momentum; isolation stalls it | Mastermind group cheering weekly progress |
| Psychological safety | Fear of failure paralyses experimentation | Junior dev afraid every Git commit is a career‑ender |
| Timing in the life cycle | Toddler years, elder‑care, study periods recalibrate bandwidth | Empty‑nest evenings vs. newborn night‑feeds |
Takeaway: When we praise—or shame—someone’s “output,” we rarely see the invisible constraints on their hours.
That’s why no blueprint can ever tell you exactly, step‑by‑step, how to achieve a goal in a set time: it simply can’t account for all your variables.
When luck is just preparation in disguise
Luck is often framed as serendipity—things just happen. In reality, chance events only convert into tangible wins when the person who encounters them already holds the skill‑set, capacity, and resources the moment demands.
- Skill & knowledge match. You don’t land a “dream job” because you tripped and fell into an interview—you spent evenings learning the stack, practising white‑board problems, and contributing to open‑source so that when a recruiter finally pinged your inbox, you could deliver on day one.
- Mental & emotional bandwidth. Spotting patterns, connecting dots, and saying yes requires spare cognitive fuel. Chronic stress, illness, or grief narrows your situational awareness until lucky breaks slide by unnoticed.
- Resource runway. Opportunity usually asks for an upfront deposit—time off work to prototype, money for a short course, or childcare while you pitch. Having a buffer lets you cash in on the offer.
- Purpose compass. Knowing the direction you want to move primes you to recognise relevant doors. Without it, every possibility feels equally shiny—and paralysing.
Prepare for the luck you want
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” — Probably not Abraham Lincoln, but definitely every motivational poster
If you dream of shipping an award‑winning, lucrative app, the prerequisite isn’t a fairy god‑investor (if you ever find one); it’s incremental prep:
- Acquire core competencies. Code foundations, UI/UX basics, product validation, marketing 101. Use free MOOCs if cash‑tight, paid bootcamps if time‑tight.
- Prototype relentlessly. Tiny weekend builds teach more than endless theory; they also double as a portfolio.
- Network in the ecosystem. Comment on GitHub issues, give lightning talks, hang out in niche Slack channels. This is how “random” co‑founder coffees happen.
- Cultivate runway. Trim expenses, bank savings, negotiate flexible hours—whatever stocks the opportunity fund.
- Signal readiness. Blog, tweet, publish. Visibility invites serendipity; silence hides your preparedness.
Do the work first. Then, when the proverbial lightning strikes, people will marvel at how lucky you are—while you just get on with delivering.
“It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.” — Eddie Cantor
Psychological safety — the invisible privilege
Psychological safety is the gut‑level sense that “I can speak up, mess up and still belong.” Coined by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson and later spotlighted by Google’s Project Aristotle, it means freedom from ridicule or punishment when you take interpersonal risks.
- At home. Children raised in volatile or hyper‑critical households learn to shrink their voice. Adults in tense relationships burn mental bandwidth monitoring moods instead of planning futures.
- At work. When managers weaponise mistakes, staff hoard ideas and over‑polish trivial tasks. Marginalised colleagues pay a double tax—fear of feeding stereotypes.
- Why it disappears. Material insecurity (can I pay rent?), bias, trauma and rigid hierarchies erode the “safe‑to‑fail” buffer. Time pressure makes it worse: urgency kills curiosity.
Without psychological safety, experimentation feels reckless. You don’t pitch the stretch project, launch that passion project, or enrol in a night course—you’re busy armouring up.
Creating psychological safety in teams
Teach people it’s OK to fail—but not OK to plan for failure.
- Normalize smart risk‑taking. Celebrate well‑designed experiments, even when they flop. Hold “failure retrospectives” where the process is applauded as much as the outcome.
- Separate blame from accountability. When something goes wrong, examine the system first, not the individual. Focus on what failed, not who failed—then co‑create fixes.
- Model vulnerability at the top. Leaders admit their own missteps in real time. A quick “Here’s what I learned” memo sets the cultural tone.
- Define the guardrails. Clarify that recklessness—knowingly cutting corners—isn’t covered by the safety net. The rule of thumb: fail in pursuit of improvement, not out of neglect.
- Institute quick feedback loops. Frequent, low‑stakes check‑ins mean issues surface early, reducing the cost of mistakes and the fear around them.
- Reward curiosity. Recognise questions and exploratory prototypes in performance reviews. Curiosity is the precursor to innovation and, by extension, “lucky” breakthroughs.
Failure lets us learn in visceral ways that can either beat us down, or give us the tools to learn and grow. Anchor every project to the mantra: “We’re free to fail forward, but never to fail by design.”
Hacking the system when you’re short on one resource
First of all, I want to shout very loudly that it’s OK to stand still. Sometimes the win you’re needing is just to stay afloat and keep breathing above water. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. These quick fixes won’t close wage gaps, erase visa hurdles, or cure chronic illness—they’re coping strategies, not structural solutions. We survive first, then we consider how we thrive.
Second, I’m wary of the word “hack.” Online it’s become shorthand for “miracle shortcut,” a close cousin of hustle‑culture hype. A genuine hack isn’t a cheat code—it’s lateral thinking: looking at a problem from an unexpected angle and choosing the non‑obvious route that achieves more with less.
Now, if you’re up for some lateral ideas on how to rebalance the hours, here we go:
• Cash‑rich, time‑poor?
- Purchase speed. Grocery apps, laundry pickup, meal kits—pay to reclaim evenings.
- Micro‑learning. No bandwidth for long reads? Services like Blinkist or Shortform distil books into 15‑minute listens. (Yes, pay for annual plans—or ride the free‑trial carousel if that’s your guilty pleasure.)
- Mentor arbitrage. Hire a coach for an hour instead of wading through six podcasts.
• Time‑rich, cash‑tight?
- Library hacking. Your council library likely offers free e‑books, audiobooks, and even LinkedIn Learning courses.
- Open‑source everything. MIT OpenCourseWare, Coursera’s audit option, YouTube university—the knowledge is there; your currency is focus.
- Skill barter. Trade design help for coding lessons, babysitting for guitar tutoring.
• Cash‑tight & time‑tight?
- Distil someone else’s learning cycle. Use services like Blinkist or Scribd (often via free trials) where big ideas are boiled down into 15‑minute bites you can absorb on a break.
- Micro‑interval learning.** Sneak 2–5‑minute bursts: flashcard apps in a queue, lecture snippets at 1.5× speed on the commute.
- Stack goals on mandatory tasks. Turn dog walks into podcast university; rehearse pitches while washing up.
- Tap employer freebies. Dig through HR portals for hidden LinkedIn Learning licences, tuition reimbursement, or internal workshops.
- Peer exchange. Pair with someone in the same crunch; trade cheat sheets, share accountability texts, rotate child‑watch if possible.
- Leverage sleep. Frame problems before bed—your subconscious does overnight R&D free of charge. BE AWARE: Don’t trade good sleep for a short term gain unless it’s vital. It takes more than an additional hour sleep another time to rebalance for every hour lost.
• Parent schedule jigsaw?
- Golden naptime. Identify 30‑minute child‑down blocks and script them in advance—tiny tasks only.
- Learning in motion. Audiobooks during school runs are an amazing way to pick up new info Even better, use Blinkist or Scribd, both of which will give you the core info from a book in under 15 minutes.
• AI – the great equaliser?
- Distill at scale. Feed AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude batches of meeting transcripts, YouTube captions, research papers or blog posts and let them surface the key points.
- Target deep dives. Ask the model to flag which sources merit your scarce focus time, so you reserve full reads for the highest‑value material.
- Iterative drill‑down. Follow up with prompts for step‑by‑step plans, counter‑arguments, or translation into simpler language until the summary serves your need.
- Stay cost‑savvy. Use free tiers and community tools (Perplexity.ai, Poe) and only pay for heavy‑lift API calls when the payoff is clear.
The principle is simple: swap what you have for what you lack. The alchemy of self‑development is resource‑conversion.
Further reading from other voices
- Brigid Schulte – Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time (gendered time poverty)
- Arlie Hochschild – The Second Shift (unpaid care work)
- Alice Wong (ed.) – Disability Visibility (disabled perspectives on work & agency)
- Podcast: Code Switch (NPR) – race & opportunity in everyday life
- Podcast: The Nod – Black stories of resilience and creativity
- Adam Grant – Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (reciprocity and fairness at work from a mainstream organisational‑psychology lens)
- Podcast: WorkLife with Adam Grant – practical episodes on balance, privilege, and what “fair” looks like inside teams
Closing thought: Less Friction, More Awareness
Privilege is, at its core, the lubricant that lets some of us move through the world with far less friction than others. The smoother our path, the easier it is to accelerate—often without noticing the drag others are fighting against. If this post does nothing else, I hope it sharpens our eyesight for those hidden gradients. Once we see them, we can choose either to coast or to extend a hand and smooth the way for someone else.
Call to action
- Audit your privilege portfolio. List the assets you take for granted—time, money, health, support.
- Spend lavishly on preparation. Use whichever currency you hold (minutes, motivation, or money) to buy skills that print future autonomy.
- Pay the privilege tax forward. If you’re flush with one asset, subsidise someone who isn’t—watch their kids, share your course notes, advocate for fair scheduling everywhere you can.
- Ask for help. If you have no flexibility in your resources, find somewhere where you can ask for resources. It doesn’t always feel like it, but there are people out there, like you and me, who want to help others succeed. Find them and see what they can do for you.
Balance may be a luxury, but agency is negotiable. Hack the system, learn loudly, and when fortune knocks—have your bags packed.
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