Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa woke one morning to find himself transformed into an insect. Martha Stewart wakes at 4 a.m. and finds herself with choices. Both treat the morning as the start of a transformation, though only one reads the entire New York Times before breakfast.Stewart is 85, and her career has spanned Wall Street, television sets, the modeling studio and federal prison. Fortune reports that the lifestyle mogul has built a business empire estimated at $400 million. Earlier this month, in conversation with Vivian Tu, the former Wall Street trader who runs the social media account Your Rich BFF, Stewart turned on an idea that a generation of professionals treats as gospel: work-life balance.“There is no such thing as balance,” Stewart told Tu, adding, “just get that through your thick skulls.” She did not stop there. “You can’t balance it,” she said. “It doesn’t balance.”
The case against the ideal
Stewart’s argument rests on how life behaves, not on how it ought to behave. Major events, marriage and divorce among them, throw things off course, she said, and no schedule absorbs that shock.She conceded that some people may strike a balance now and then, but she is not convinced it is the norm. “This thing about balance, I don’t know who thought about that,” she said, “but it just doesn’t work.” Of those who manage it, she said she is “jealous of those people” before delivering the verdict: “they’re also boring.”
A day that starts before dawn
Her own routine offers little evidence of a woman in search of equilibrium. According to Fortune, Stewart rises at 4 a.m., reads the entire New York Times and heads to Pilates or a session with her personal trainer. By 7 a.m., she is working on projects that range from her lifestyle brand to an artificial intelligence startup. She expects her staff to be working too.
Metamorphosis, not pivot
Career commentators like the word “pivot”. Stewart does not. She told Tu she hates it, preferring to describe her journey as a series of metamorphoses, an idea she credits to Kafka.A pivot implies a single turn on a fixed foot, while a metamorphosis implies that the thing itself changes. “Why be bored?” Stewart said. If a moment of boredom arrives, or she cannot get up because she does not want to face the day, she considers that a warning sign, and she looks for something new to pursue.“When I get up in the morning, I have choices,” she said. “I can do whatever right now; I can do anything I want to do every day.” She added that she likes having something to look forward to, and that surprises are also good.
What freedom costs
Her affinity for freedom has an obvious origin. Stewart served five months in federal prison for crimes related to an investigation into a stock sale. Since her release in 2005, she has rebuilt her public profile and expanded her brands.Whether her philosophy works as advice or only as autobiography is a fair question. Balance is easier to dismiss when you own the company and can ask your staff to start at 7 a.m. But Stewart’s point was never really about hours. It was about boredom, and on that she has been consistent for decades.