Success is a harmony

You might have heard Jeff Bezos talk about work-life harmony instead of work-life balance. What if harmony applied more broadly as a metaphor for life?

There are rhythms we all live out — our breaths, the days and nights, the rising and falling energy and focus levels. They form patterns of our lives, much like the phrases of classical music. If these rhytms are interleaved well, they produce a harmony, if not, they produce cacophony.

You misuse your high-energy time of the day, you contribute to noise. You use that time to focus and do deep work, you contribute to harmony.

You don’t sleep enough, it disturbs the rhytm of the next day. You sleep diligently, it enables you to best use the patterns you understand to achieve the outcomes you want.

A harmony is a dynamic model for looking at what success means. The better you integrate all the people, work, dreams, or activities together to form a harmonious rhythm, the better you’ll feel.

When we look at others who we see as successful, a tempting metric to use for comparison is money. But there are people who have the same amount or more and feel miserable. Other metrics like fame or the number of expensive cars are also imprecise.

What if we could instead compare others based on whether they seem to be living a harmonious life or not? Does how they do work and treat and care for their family align with who they seem to be? And is that true in our own lives?

We can all create our own original harmony by looking at parts of our day and figuring out how they can fit together better. The opportunities are there.

Where’s the noise in your day? Where’s the clutter? Where are the depressing notes?

Turn them into a harmony.