Our Actual Work-Life Balance: What It Looks Like (Not the Instagram Version)
- P. Murray
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
I'm writing this on a Thursday at 9:47pm while a load of laundry is running and E has been asleep for forty minutes and Z asked me twenty minutes ago if I could come cuddle and I said yes but then I sat down "for just a second" and here we are.
This is work-life balance in a physician household. Not a thought leadership post about work-life balance. The actual version.
My husband and I have been refining this for years and we still get it wrong regularly. But I want to share what has actually shifted things for us, because I think the advice I hear most often .... "protect time for yourself," "learn to say no," "put the phone away" .... isn't wrong, exactly, but it doesn't tell you the mechanics of how to do those things when your schedule is genuinely out of your control three days a week.
The data behind this struggle is stark: a 2023 Medscape survey found that physicians work an average of 51.4 hours per week .... and that nearly 40% spend an additional 10+ hours per week on paperwork and prior authorizations alone. Work-life balance isn't a mindset problem for most of us. It's a structural one.
How Physicians Actually Spend Their Time
Time Category | Average Hours/Week | Physicians Who Report This as a Burden |
Direct patient care | ~21 hours | Moderate |
EHR documentation | ~9 hours | Very high (60%) |
Administrative tasks | ~10 hours | Very high (70%) |
Meetings/coordination | ~5 hours | Moderate |
On-call availability | ~6 hours | High |
Source: Medscape Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2023; AMA EHR studies.
The One Rule That Changed the Most
We don't talk about work at dinner. This sounds so small. It is not small.
For a while, our dinner conversation was essentially a debrief of each other's difficult days, and by the end of it we were both more stressed and the kids were listening to stressed adults. We changed it. Dinner is now, as much as possible, for the kids and for whatever they need to tell us. My husband asked E last week to describe her day using only animal sounds. It went on for an extremely long time and no one talked about their caseload.
The Calendar Negotiation
We block our non-negotiables at the start of each month. Z's FAI appointments go in first. E's therapy goes in. The two or three evenings per month we commit to just being home together with no other plans. Then work fills in around those, not the reverse.
This doesn't always hold. Medicine doesn't always cooperate. But the act of blocking them sends a signal .... to ourselves, mostly .... that these things are the structure, not the afterthoughts.
What We Gave Up
We hired a cleaning service. We stopped apologizing for this. We do grocery delivery most weeks. We stopped making this mean something about our capability as people.
I gave up being the room parent. Z's school sent home a sign-up sheet last September and I looked at it for a long time and I did not sign up. I sent in a check for the class party instead. This is the kind of choice that used to produce guilt in me. It doesn't anymore, mostly.
Strategies That Research Actually Supports
Strategy | Evidence | Ease of Implementation |
Technology-free dinners | Reduces cortisol; improves family communication (Harvard Family Dinner Project) | Medium |
Pre-scheduling personal time | Reduces decision fatigue; increases follow-through (APA) | High |
Delegating domestic tasks | Linked to relationship satisfaction and reduced burnout (Dew & Bradford, 2012) | High (if affordable) |
EHR inbox boundaries | Setting defined 'response windows' reduces evening intrusion (JAMA, 2022) | Medium |
Therapy/coaching | Most effective single intervention for physician burnout (Shanafelt, Mayo Clin Proc) | Medium |
The Part I'm Still Figuring Out
The device thing, honestly. I know the data on what constant connectivity does to recovery. I know that checking my EHR messages at 9pm is not a good use of 9pm. I do it anyway, some nights. This is a work in progress.
If you're a physician in a household trying to hold it all together: you're probably doing better than you think. And also, dinner without talking about work is genuinely worth trying.
This post reflects my personal experience and is for informational purposes only. It is not medical advice. Please consult your own physician before making any health decisions.
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