It has taken several decades of work-life balance done poorly to finally recognize that margin and white space are superpowers.
There’s so much pressure—mostly from within—to fill the minutes and hours with activity, consumption, and inputs.
Right now I’m holding a lot: multiple missions, many projects, diverse stakeholders. The task list is never-ending. The backlog seems to grow daily. I could freeze time for days and never get caught up.
These are realities that most people face.
But what I’ve found, learned through hard-fought lessons, is that even with an overfull slate, I must build in white space. When I schedule and budget unfilled time, it accelerates and sharpens the rest of my work. Sometimes I’m so immersed in building widgets that I’ve lost a big picture vision. And when I embrace margin—stepping back to take a 10 minute walk, for instance—suddenly there’s space for a revelation to emerge.
Those from-margin revelations can save time, eliminate chaff, and expose bloat. They show that the widget didn’t need to be made after all: there’s a much more graceful pathway possible.
It’s amazing how choosing to stop can be so accelerating.