Work/life balance is a lie.
Not because people don’t mean well when they talk about it. But because the entire framework is built on a false premise.
Because what is “life,” in this scenario? Everything that is not your job? Your health, relationships, hobbies, rest, and creative practice all bundled together and weighed against what you do for income?
What about the creative work you do whose primary intention is personal expression? The projects that matter deeply but do not generate income? Where do those belong in a framework that treats paid work as one thing and everything else as its opposite?
There’s a better way to approach how you prioritize your time, energy, and resources.
Rather than treating everything as either “work” or “not work,” recognize that different areas of your life ask different things of you at different times.
Instead of work versus everything else, you can begin with a few lenses that act as scaffolding to help you notice what you actually are focused on so you can then make informed choices that align with your values and intentions.
I call these lenses Life Domains.
These are not boxes to measure and fill equally.
Instead of balance, they work together to produce coherence. A coherence that looks different day to day, week to week, season to season. Where the various elements of your life work together in harmony and alignment.
This week, we are exploring how these domains support clarity through situated intention.
Understanding Life Domains
Rather than trying to account for every part of your life all at once, life domains let you focus your attention in smaller, more nuanced, more meaningful areas. Each domain highlights a different kind of need, and each asks a different question of you.
The four domains below are the ones I recommend and personally use as a starting point. They have been enough to create clarity across most seasons of my life without becoming complicated or brittle.
They are not meant to be exhaustive. They are meant to be useful in real life.
Wellness
Wellness is the activity you engage in to maintain physical, psychological, and emotional capacity.
This includes movement and exercise, nutrition and rest, reflection or meditation, emotional regulation, and mental health care.
Work
Work is how you produce value for yourself and others.
This includes paid employment, creative practice with or without monetization, learning and skill-building, and contribution that matters to you even when it is not tied to income.
Separating work from earning matters. When worth and income collapse into the same space, everything starts to feel heavier than it needs to be.
Play
Play is activity done purely for enjoyment.
No improvement required.
No output expected.
No usefulness necessary.
This is often the first domain to disappear when things get busy, and one of the hardest to justify when you are overwhelmed.
Relationships
Relationships are the activities that build and sustain connection.
Family and close friendships. Romantic partnerships. Professional peers and creative collaborators. Even time with pets.
A note on flexibility
These four domains are not a rigid taxonomy. They are a starting structure that can grow with you.
In my own experience, I eventually realized that a significant portion of my time and attention was going toward systems design. It fit under Work, but it had become its own distinct focus. That led me to introduce a separate Systems domain to support my action management and intention design work.
I’ve also seen people introduce domains like Spirituality or Faith for the same reason I added Systems. Those areas had grown large enough that they needed their own lens rather than living inside Wellness.
What I’d caution against is trying to design the “perfect” set of domains ahead of time. Don’t guess what you might need in advance or overbuild the system too early. Start small. Work with the initial four. Let observation and reflection show you where something new wants to emerge.
From Lenses to Coherence: Mapping Your Current Reality
Understanding the domains intellectually is only the first step.
Coherence begins when you start noticing how your time, energy, and attention are actually distributed across them. Not how you intend to spend your time. Not how you think it should look. What is really happening.
This is where the domains become useful. They give you a simple way to map reality without judgment.
Start with what you already have
You don’t need a new tool or a fresh system to begin.
If you keep a task list or to-do manager, start there. Look at the items you’ve been working on and ask: which domain does this belong to?
If you don’t keep a task list, look at your calendar instead. Scan the past week or the current one and notice where your time has actually gone.
Meetings. Appointments. Blocks of focused work. Social time. Rest. Errands. Even empty space.
Then map what you see to the domains.
Not perfectly. Just honestly.
Observe before you interpret
As you map, resist the urge to fix anything.
This is not an audit. It is not a scorecard. It is simply a way of making the invisible visible.
You may notice that most of your attention is going to Work, with very little space left for Play or Relationships. You may notice that Wellness only appears reactively, when you are already depleted or sick. You may discover that certain domains exist more in intention than in practice.
All of that is useful information.
Clarity doesn’t come from immediate correction. It comes from seeing reality clearly enough that change can be intentional rather than reactive.
Let coherence emerge from what you see
Once you have a rough map of where your attention is going, ask one orienting question:
Which domain feels most out of sync with my current intentions?
That question doesn’t require balance. It doesn’t demand equal time. It simply points you toward the place where coherence wants to be restored.
From there, define one small action for that domain this week. Something simple. Something realistic. Something that fits the season you are in.
Coherence is not achieved by optimizing every domain at once. It emerges when the right domain receives the right kind of attention at the right time.
Notice First, Let Coherence Grow
Life domains aren’t meant to organize your life in advance. They help you notice where your attention is actually going, and where it may be asking for something different.
When you take the time to map your current reality, even loosely, patterns begin to surface. Signals about capacity. Signals about neglect. Signals about what matters most in this season.
Spend a few minutes this week mapping where your time and attention have actually gone. The clarity that comes from simply noticing will help you make more informed choices about where your focus and energy could work towards coherence and alignment.
Until next week,
May your attention find its right home.
Jeff