I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt

by Madeleine Dore

What if, instead of striving for balance and stability, we embrace the wobble? Rather than striving for a life of perfect order, we can wobble between those tasks and commitments that are most meaningful, pressing, or simply desirable in each moment. Rather than setting rules primed for balance and perpetually failing, we can wobble among different habits, responsibilities, and interests. We can apply self-awareness rather than self-regulation to the things to which we give our time and attention, instead of simply checking boxes. This means we can still identify the things that have proven to steady us—whether that’s eating well, meditating, going for a morning swim, getting a coffee from that friendly barista—but we can also acknowledge that these things won’t always neatly stack up in perfect harmony each day. Wobbling is a process of constant adjustment—you can be moving toward equilibrium and acknowledge that you don’t necessarily find yourself settled there. It’s a dance between diligence and flexibility, adding and subtracting. It’s an act of balancing rather than balance itself.