The race to achieve work-life balance is a farce for most of us. Instead, Poynter faculty Kristen Hare argues, we should strive to find a work-life chemistry — a formula that we can use to help us make daily and big-picture decisions.
Hare created a new Work-Life Chemistry course based on a lesson she’s taught at Poynter for years. During a LinkedIn Live event called “Finding your Work-Life Chemistry (and why work-life balance is a lie)” on Jan. 9, she collected a panel of Poynter program alumni to talk about how finding their own formulas has helped their work and personal lives.
Hare spoke with:
- Yukari Kane, co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of the Prison Journalism Project
- Kristie May, managing editor at NowKalamazoo
- Justin Mitchell, managing editor for digital at NOLA.com
“To feel fulfilled in your work and not guilty, figuring out a different framework is the key,” Hare said. “So work-life chemistry, for me, is how you figure out what drives you. And then how to protect it and how to use it, particularly to avoid burnout.”
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Hare: I want to start with the basic thing that led me to think about work-life chemistry, and that’s work-life balance. As a writer, as a person who loves words, I was really dissatisfied with the words “work-life balance,” because it became pretty clear to me fairly early in my career before becoming a parent that I worked more than I lived. How on earth was I to balance those two things?
What’s your experience been like with work-life balance? Is that also a bit of garbage for you like it was for me?
May: Balance feels like two separate worlds you’re trying to juggle. Especially as a journalist, there’s nothing separate about your work and your life.
Not to jump ahead, but for me chemistry feels like those two things are bonded together to create one element, which is my life. Balance just felt like a lie. I would always give more to the work side and before you know it one was always falling or failing.
Hare: One of the things that’s always frustrated me about work-life balance is the guilt that it leads to, because it’s this impossible goal, and so let’s come up with something that is more humane and kinder and easier to do.
Kane: It’s a miserable failure. I think it’s exactly what you said, Kristen, it feels unattainable to me. Because I don’t know how we can do this work with balance. And I still struggle with chemistry, too. On Friday, I was working till 3 a.m. I didn’t sleep at all Sunday night, and I started work at 5 a.m. on Monday. So, you know, I’m going to be recalibrating once again.
Mitchell: The term balance, it’s something that doesn’t even really compute with me. On Sunday night I was up at 11 p.m. reading weather discussions from the National Weather Service, because we got really bad weather this week. And then I was up at 4 a.m. Monday and worked all day, and then came back at 10 p.m. Monday night to make sure things were getting done. I’ve never been able to use the term “work-life balance” in any way that is truthful to who I am as a person and as a journalist.
Hare: This is a thing that’s particularly hard for journalists, but I think this applies to anybody. If you work for a living, you’re going to spend more time in that pursuit. To feel fulfilled in your work and not guilty, figuring out a different framework is the key. So work-life chemistry, for me, is how you figure out what drives you. And then how to protect it and how to use it, particularly to avoid burnout. How do each of you understand the concept of work-life chemistry?
Kane: For me, it’s about not burning out to be able to feel like I have enough of a life, that I’m doing enough with my family, that I don’t get so tired that I lose excitement in the job that I love so much.
Mitchell: It’s figuring out where these two worlds come together, where I need my alone time to reset and recharge and realistically how I can make that happen.
May: It’s figuring out what’s important to me, and centering my work and my personal life around those values. I don’t want this to drain me. I want to enjoy life every day instead of carving out time to enjoy life, which includes work because for me, I do love what I do. I just don’t want it to drain me or be all of me. When it comes to work, I don’t want to lose excitement for it. But I want to figure out how to bond these two lives, to put together what I do at work and what drives me at home.
Hare: This is definitely not a quick-fix process. Work-life chemistry is a long-game thing. I’ve been working on it for years and continually I’m rethinking my own work-life chemistry formula. For each of you, what makes work-life chemistry different from work-life balance?
Kane: Balance just seems unachievable. It feels like it’s an all-or-nothing game whereas chemistry is something that you can keep recalibrating. You can start again. It’s a process.
Mitchell: Balance, you really think of it as a 50-50 thing, which isn’t realistic at all. Not for us as humans or as journalists. With chemistry, it’s this myriad of things working together to make this beautiful life that you want to have in all the worlds that you’re in at one time.
Hare: If you’re new to the concept of work-life chemistry, it’s made up of a formula. The formula is usually three elements; two elements that are based on some choices you’ve made in your life, and one that’s aspirational.
It’s the idea of how these things are mixed together, how they can work against you if you’re not careful, and how to use them to help guide your decisions and help you decide what you’re going to say no to, how to spend your time, how to prioritize relationships. My formula is ever-changing, and the most current iteration for 2024 is: flexibility, creativity and peace.
I discovered really early on in thinking about work-life chemistry that I thought one of my elements would be my family. I am the mom of two remarkable teenagers and have always been really driven by getting to be a central part of their lives. I realized I want flexibility in my work and in my life and the things I do in this space where they overlap. And so flexibility, creativity and peace is my formula. Anybody else want to share your formula?
May: I can go first. My formula is creativity, flexibility and order. So order is my aspirational, creativity because I love the opportunity for experimentation and no monotony in my day. Flexibility for me, same things that you said Kristen, before it was family, but for me flexibility equals space for family. I’m also a business owner in my free time.
Mitchell: I think my three … one is also flexibility. One is freedom. And the other is also creativity. In each of these jobs, the thing that I love about my position is that something’s different every day, and being creative both personally and professionally are really important to me. And so is spending time at work doing creative things, but also finding an outlet outside of work to do the things I love, like photography and art and mixed media.
When it comes to flexibility, having a flexible schedule, and being able to be flexible all the time, it’s something that’s very important to me when I took this job. I was very insistent on like, how much flexibility will I have? That’s something that’s really important to me. The last one is, I really need time I can unplug and just be present with myself and put the computers and the phones away. Those are the kind of three things that blend together to make it successful for me.
Kane: Mine is a little bit different. I was actually frantically digging to remember what it was. But it’s making a difference. I started this organization that I run, Prison Journalism Project, so making a difference in my work is important to me. Learning to be able to carve out a space to constantly be learning is important. And then my final one is sustainability.
Hare: That sustainability piece of it is so important, especially in the role that you’re in, Yukari. So let’s talk about how you’ve used your formula, I will tell you a story of a way that I’ve used it. One of the things I think that’s magical about work-life chemistry, once you understand what drives you, and you put words to it, and you have an idea of what your formula is, then you can run your choices big and small up against it.
Many years ago, I was offered the role of managing editor at Poynter, and I really wanted it. But it came with the stipulation that I come into the office every day. I have worked remotely now for 16 years, as many years as I have had my eldest, and I live more than an hour away from Poynter. So, realistically, an hour and a half in traffic. It worked for me for creativity. I don’t remember what my other element was at the time. It was probably connection. It worked for me for that.
But it did not work for flexibility. Spending up to three hours a day on highways was not a thing I wanted to do at that point in my life. So my formula helped me say no to that opportunity. And I don’t regret it. I have loved the way my career has developed since then. It was really hard at the time, but I was able to look at this opportunity and say, “No, this is going directly against something that is really important for me and something that I’m driven by.”
Flash forward multiple years later, maybe two years ago, my boss at Poynter sat me down and said, “Hey, I think you should join the teaching team and be on our faculty. I want you to do more teaching and take work-life chemistry and other things that you’ve built and spread it more and work with early career journalists.” And by this point, because of the pandemic, it was a 100% remote job. So most of the work that I do now is remote, and my formula fits perfectly. It wasn’t what I imagined for myself and a career in journalism — I really always saw myself in a newsroom — but it was a great fit and it was an opportunity I said yes to. So, do any of you have any stories you can share about how you’ve used your formula in the workplace?
May: I do have a story of how I actually used this formula. So I heard this lesson in June, and months later, there was an attempt to poach me at this legacy organization here in Michigan. It did not work for me because as I just said, creativity is one of the pillars of my formula. While I of course was honored and definitely appreciate the work that this organization does, they are bound to certain protocols and systems being a legacy organization in ways that I am not bound to at NowKalamazoo because we’re a startup organization. We are literally figuring out, I’m using air quotes here, “how to do news differently.”
If I would have joined this organization, it would have robbed me of my flexibility, which is another pillar. It took me some time, and I was just like, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m still in my 20s, you don’t turn down legacy offers. But it just did not fit with my formula. And I know that I’m lucky and I’m privileged to be with NowKalamazoo where I feel like my publisher really appreciates the same thing that I say things that I appreciate.
But yes, I was able to take my formula into account and I just recognized that I didn’t even get to the money talk yet because I was like, “No, this is already not fitting with two of my pillars.” We still will talk money because I’m not crazy, but I’m already going into it knowing that I have what I want here at NowKalamazoo and I can’t just be easily poached.
Mitchell: One comes from my previous job a couple months ago, when I was the editor at the Sun Herald in Biloxi (Mississippi). It’s a very small newsroom with a very overperforming staff. The staff was like family, but I just felt this immense dedication to them and to our audiences. That would mean me staying up late, or waking up early, making sure that we were doing everything we could possibly do to make sure we were reaching our audience and supporting the staff. At some point later, in my career at the Sun Herald, I started telling people, “Hey, I’m leaving, and I’m not available unless it’s an emergency. I’m putting my phone on Do Not Disturb. You can override that by calling me twice, but it needs to be an emergency.” And that’s something that’s really stuck with me.
For me, working from home really affected my work-life chemistry in a negative way, because I didn’t have separate spaces that I needed to flourish. We have co-working spaces and I work from a coffee shop a lot, but a big thing about taking this job was this newsroom where I could be creative, and work with this team of journalists every day, day in and day out if I wanted to. But we also had the flexibility of working from home if we want, and it kind of hit a bunch of those pillars and was a big reason, you know, having this place where I can go sit and be present. And then when I leave, I can still put my phone on Do Not Disturb or I can choose to be home for a day. It was a magical thing for me.
Kane: I guess I have a couple things as well. Shortly after my program with Poynter I applied for CUNY’s executive media leadership program, which is a yearlong commitment. I was accepted, and I’m doing it now. I love being able to feel like I’m learning and I’m growing some skills while I’m also managing this organization. And then secondly, I run this organization with a co-founder, I built it, so it’s also about recognizing how important this is for my team in order for our organization to be sustainable.
Hare: That’s fantastic. I want to talk a little bit about how to, like, use this in your work specifically with your bosses or your workplaces, when your work itself is conflicting with your formula. For me, it meant changing my formula and meant realizing that I had to make changes in what I was prioritizing. And so my quick story is that, you know, after many years of covering local news for Poynter, my work during the pandemic became the awful job of tracking newsroom closures and an endless list of layoffs. I was just really driven to catch every single one that I could, I felt like we were in a singular moment and it was important that we had some record of it. My formula at the time was creativity, flexibility and order.
Order was used as an aspirational element to keep myself from sort of letting things get out of control in my work and in my life outside of work. But order meant that I was up until very late every night searching, and just kind of never able to walk away from this work. My children were in pandemic school, which was super fun. And I remember, I came down from my home office after a very long day. And my husband said, “So how’s that work-life chemistry formula working for you?” And I was like, OK, I have to make a change. So my change was understanding that order was no longer working for me. I needed to apply something new, and that was discernment.
Discernment was the next element that I needed, so that I could make better choices about what was important. Working for a nonprofit (I’m also a local author) I can sort of swim in a sea of yes. And so using discernment helped me decide what I was going to do and how well it fit with my formula, and also my values and the things that are important to me in my life.
I probably change my aspirational element every six months, when I feel friction. That’s when I have to think, “What is it that’s not working right now? What do I need to change to get myself back in alignment?” Do any of you have any experiences with this?
May: I have to say, I feel very lucky for where I work in Kalamazoo. So my publisher-slash-boss is a father. He very much leads by example. I would say that if he did this formula, we would probably have similar ones with flexibility and creativity being two elements of both of our formulas. I don’t typically run into a lot of problems where I can’t just have a candid conversation with him about it if something’s missing. Like I said earlier, though, order is also my aspirational and since NowKalamazoo is a startup, it doesn’t always feel like there’s order. When I’m able to recognize when it’s getting too out of control, I go back to being able to have candid conversations with my publisher on, “Hey, I’m not going to be my best self until we get X figured out.” We’re usually able to work something out and work together to bring my chemistry back into balance.
Mitchell: Authenticity is like a core value of who I am as a person. I’m almost unapologetically, authentically myself, so I’ve never really had an issue. When the burnout’s been real, or something wasn’t working, or I was unhappy, I’ve always felt like I’m in a place where I’ve been supported, where I can say, “Hey, this isn’t working. I need support, how can we change this? What things can we do to get me in a better spot to where I need to be?”
I’ve done this a lot throughout my career, coming through COVID and hurricanes and mass shootings, the list is endless. I’ve been able to take a step back throughout my career and say, it’s really important to me to take an hour lunch break every day to just reset, or I need to leave early on this day to do something for myself or get to the gym. It’s been very helpful when I feel the burnout coming, just communicating it early, and getting back into that place where my chemistry is right, and just attacking it head-on as best as I can.
Hare: I want to talk about burnout for a minute. This is something that I spent a lot of last year researching and I wrote a story about it recently. It’s taken me a long time to connect, how my work-life chemistry supports me from burnout and helps me start to avoid it. But it really is the elements of my formula that are the secrets for mitigating burnout.
Now, I’m not talking about burnout caused by overwork — that is a systemic issue. But this is the kind of regular career wear and tear that can happen and can include demoralization and secondary traumatic stress. And so one of the things that I do when work is starting to feel extra heavy for a variety of reasons is I look to creativity, to help me start to feel some equilibrium. I am a spray paint home decorator and a thrifter, and want to do everything as cheaply and as by myself as possible without having to take out power tools, which I have no idea how to use.
But finding little projects that I can do is super inspiring for me, and always I feel like it helps me come back to a place of stability. I know that everybody is dealing with a lot right now, particularly for those of us who are journalists. Has your formula helped you recalibrate as you started to enter burnout?
May: Oh, yes, for me being in a new job, and I’ve been here for three months, it’s been my formula to make sure that I’m where I need to be the best version of myself. I’ve been empowered to be like, “Hey, I worked some extra hours. So I’m going to take some comp time or a comp day.” I know that sounds really small, but coming into this job knowing I’m gonna manage my time as best as I can to keep my life on track has been working like a magic charm for me.
Hare: That makes me so happy to hear. I’m curious who you all think work-life chemistry is good for? I have taught it exclusively to journalists. Who do you think this work is good for it? It feels to me like it’s beyond our industry.
May: I would say it’s good for anyone. This is pretty much you recognizing what is essential for you to be a happy human. And then figuring out how to maintain those three elements as a worker, as a wife, as a mother, whatever role that you play. Since we’re talking about work, we spend so much time working. And if you’re spending most of that time working without the elements that you need, you will become an unhappy human. And you can only keep up that facade for so long.
Kane: I’m gonna agree with Kristie. I tell people about it all the time. Since the pandemic, I think everybody’s thinking about trying to be conscious and making choices about how they want to live their lives. Work-life balance feels unattainable. I’m not even sure I know what that means. But, you know, chemistry is something that everybody can reach.
Hare: Work-life chemistry is something I’ve always taught to people that are like mid-career to executive level, and it makes a lot of sense, there’s a lot of data for them to get when they look back on their life. For early career folks, I was concerned when I first started teaching it, that it was going to feel flat. But I actually think it’s almost like preventative. I’m curious, if you think this is something that works for early-career people too?
Kane: I do have a couple of early-career people on my team, and you’re reminding me to maybe talk about this, because they don’t come in knowing all the tools or they don’t have the life experiences to figure it out. If they don’t have to go through what we had to learn, or to try to kind of figure it out yourself, then all the better. I think too, the other aspect of work-life chemistry is that if your team is able to think about it, and if we’re able to give them space to think about it, then it helps productivity on the team.
Hare: think that’s kind of the magic of this is it does make the work better. I want to just take a minute, we’ve talked a lot about how work-life chemistry helps your work. I want to talk about how it helps your life outside of your work. I’m curious how you all are using your formula to prioritize the things that you don’t get paid for?
May: I was the type of person who worked the job, I do what I’m told, I will do everything for everyone, out of fear that I will lose this job and lose this opportunity. And I no longer feel like that. With this chemistry formula, it allows me to instead focus on me, what I need and how I can be the best human at work, but then also at home.
Right after Poynter, I kind of took a moment and I was just like, what brings you happiness? I feel like I’m putting into this formula the things that keep me balanced, keep me grounded, keep me at peace so I can be my best self, at work and at home. When it comes to creativity, one of my pillars, I like to be able to experiment at work. But then also I like to have the time to just play The Sims mindlessly at home. To me, both of those things are flexibility. I like the flexibility to say at work, hey, I’m writing today, so I want to stay at home and just write. Or you know what, I’m going to spend like four hours here because I need the structure of the office to do these tasks, and then I’m going to transfer home and in the middle, go to the gym because that’s just how my brain works.
But then also, the flexibility applies to home. I need the flexibility because when I’m surrounded by my village, when I take time to see my mom and my brothers who live out of state or my friends who live out of state, I am just a happier human. And so all of this creates a happier Kristie, which means that I’m a happier wife and a happier daughter, sister. But then also, I’m happier at work. Ultimately with work, I hate to make it sound so transactional, but it’s what can someone get out of you. And you’re not gonna get anything out of me if I am miserable.
Hare: I don’t mind if we talk about work as being a transaction, because that really, literally that is what it is. I want to tell you guys a story about how I used my work-life chemistry formula recently. In September, I was on a bucket list trip with my mom, who is 78. We were on a cruise on the Rhine in Europe. And I did a lot of travel with work, specifically to Eastern Europe, before the pandemic and, and loved every single second of it. And so while I am, you know, sitting on the Rhine, we just left Holland, I’m having this amazing trip with my mom, and I get an email from somebody asking if I want to come to Kazakhstan for a journalism event?
My first response is, yes, let me just work it out. I sleep on it, I’m so excited. My mom is giving me very hard side eye for the next 24 hours, and then I slow down using discernment. I slow down enough to look at my calendar and say, wait, when is this again? And I realized that there are maybe seven days between when I get home from this trip with my mother, to when I would have to turn around and go through 40 hours of travel to get to Kazakhstan. And I realized that was not only going to be rough on my work, but also really hard on my kids. And I was going to miss volleyball games, and I was going to miss school events and some things that were really important. I realized that, you know, Kazakhstan will continue to exist, I can go another time. Discernment helped me say no to that opportunity, because it just was too tight of a turnaround. And I said, unlike some things I’ve said no to in the past, it was less reluctant and felt freer to say no to that opportunity, because I knew that I was prioritizing my work-life chemistry formula, particularly discernment. I think it was a good choice.
One final question for each of you. I wonder what advice you have for people who are reconsidering their approach to work-life balance for the first time? What should they know?
Mitchell: There were times, this is years ago in my career, where things would get so crazy I would find myself rescheduling doctor’s appointments and dentist appointments to get work done. It took a colleague and a good friend to be like, you know, if you’re not healthy, you’re not going to be here to do this work. Even before I thought about work-life chemistry, that really struck a chord with me. You have to look inside of yourself and kind of say, am I being fulfilled? Like I love this job, but what about me, outside of the journalism, what about me as a person?
I’m a workaholic. I love this. I breathe it. But at some point, you have to just decide for yourself, how is this affecting me? And is this where I want to be?
Kane: What I’m realizing as we’ve been talking is that it’s a constant recalibration, and the chemistry changes as your life changes and your work commitments change. And also, in my case, as the organization evolves and changes. Unlike balance, which feels like something that you have to get to and you never will, chemistry is something that is changing all the time, that you have to pay attention to all the time and that you have to be tending to all the time.
Hare: I love that. Yes, it’s a living thing. How about for you, Kristie?
May: I feel like as a Black woman, it will be hypocritical for me not to start off by saying I recognize that I have certain privileges. If I were having this conversation about work-life chemistry with a young me who had just left college and didn’t really have too much to fall back on and just had to get out here and go get it, I would tell myself to move so that I can get to work.
And now I’m a married woman, I share this responsibility. I don’t have kids yet, and I do have more control over what I want and where I work. So I just want to acknowledge that.
But then I also want to say I do not care how much energy you think you have. If you go long enough dissatisfied, if you go long enough without feeding back into yourself, you will burn out. If you try to band-aid that with work-life balance, one of them will fall. For me, my personal life was always falling.
I can be one of the most structured people at work, but my mom’s birthday, my brother’s graduation, things like that would always be very last minute, not as thought out. And I hated that. And I’m sorry to go dark, but I always told my husband that if he passed away today, his job would figure out how to plan things and make up for him tomorrow. So stop putting off living for the sake of working in a way that makes you unhappy, you have to find happiness in your work and you have to be present.
So adjust your formula, you may not get it all but at least try to focus on and at least try to get one of them.
Hare: The obit writer in me doesn’t mind when you go dark. That is amazing. And, and I appreciate your first note, Kristie, this work absolutely assumes that people’s basic needs are met, that you have psychological safety, that you have a job that pays you, that you have food and shelter. Those things are critical to start this off with, and so I really appreciate you saying that at the start.
