Martha Stewart, 85, says work-life balance is a myth

Martha Stewart says there is no such thing as work-life balance. 

The lifestyle mogul, 85, made the comments in a conversation with Vivian Tu, who runs the Your Rich BFF social media account, earlier this month.

“There is no such thing as balance, just get that through your thick skulls,” she said. “You can’t balance it. It doesn’t balance.”

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She said big life events, including marriage and divorce, inevitably throw things off. 

“This thing about balance, I don’t know who thought about that, but it just doesn’t work,” she said. A few people may manage it occasionally. 

“Maybe infrequently, and I’m jealous of those people, but they’re also boring.” She added, “Why be bored?”

Stewart shows no sign of slowing down. By 7 a.m., she is at work on projects ranging from her lifestyle brand to an AI startup, and she expects her staff to be working too. 

She said she dislikes the word “pivot”, and prefers to describe her career as a series of metamorphoses, a framing she took from Franz Kafka. 

Her career has spanned Wall Street, modelling, television and a federal prison sentence of five months, in a case related to a stock sale.

The comments echo others. 

In 2023, she told Footwear News that people cannot get everything done working three days a week in the office and two days remotely, which drew backlash from critics who noted she filmed shows from home. 

She has also said that her “life is my job, and my job is my life”.

Other leaders have said similar things in different ways. 

Sheryl Sandberg has said there is work and life and no balance, and Jack Welch said there are only work-life choices, which have consequences.

Richard Branson has written that he would not be where he is without his family.

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