Imagine if you could completely separate your work life from your personal life.

No stress from deadlines creeping into your evenings.

No personal worries distracting you from your 9-to-5.

Sounds good, right? But then there’s Severance, the superb AppleTV series that takes this idea to an extreme—where employees literally become two different people, one for work and one for home.

No overlap.

No connection.

No balance.

… and that’s where the problems begin.

In reality, I believe work-life balance is often a myth. The idea that we can compartmentalise every part of ourselves is unrealistic. We carry stress from home into work, and work into home. Our identity, our passions, our challenges—they don’t switch off at 5pm.

Instead, what we need is work-life alignment—where our professional and personal worlds can exist together in a way that fuels, rather than drains, us.

It’s something I see all the time in my work—whether speaking on mental health, resilience, or transformational speaking coaching. People aren’t looking for a perfect split between their “innie” and “outie” (to borrow Severance terms).

They’re looking for a way to make it all fit together in a way that feels right.

Maybe it’s not about balance being a myth, maybe it’s just about balance—whatever that looks like in your world.

Cheers

Nick 🧢

PS: If you’re a Severance fan, check out Lumon Industries Industries on LinkedIn — such a cool extension to this epic TV show. Very clever marketing to have it on this ‘professional’ platform!