A column in today's WSJ posits the theory that we spend too much time examining our lives even as we are living them, constantly fretting about whether the work/life balance is right. I think that people either can't or won't take the steps to make their lives more balanced--steps that involve tradeoffs--and they compensate for their inaction by talking about it even more. It's wheel-spinning.

Designer Bill Stumpf often quoted William Gass, who said that comfort is the absence of awareness. The same is true of work/life balance. When our lives are balanced, it doesn't even occur to us to ask the question.