The Octopus and the Lie of Balance
The Decision-Making Octopus, Part V
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← Part IV: The Octopus in Charge
You were told balance was the goal.
Get enough sleep.
Be productive but not busy.
Be present but ambitious.
Parent well. Partner well. Provide.
Don’t burn out. Don’t shut down.
Breathe.
The Octopus heard all of that and said:
Cool. I’ll build a system for that.
The Productivity Cult Trap
The Octopus loves systems.
So it makes colour-coded calendars.
It reads articles on time-blocking.
It watches YouTube videos about morning routines and buys three notebooks it’ll never fill.
Because deep down, it believes this:
If I can just do everything right, I’ll finally feel okay.
This belief is a virus.
It feels logical. It feels responsible.
It’s actually panic dressed as structure.
Life as a Spreadsheet
Balance, according to the Octopus, is a perfectly optimised life:
- Mornings for deep work
- Afternoons for presence
- Evenings for family
- Weekends for slow joy
- Monthly check-ins for alignment
- Quarterly reviews for legacy
- Annual resets for vision
It sounds nice.
But it ignores one small detail:
You’re a person. Not a machine.
You don’t reboot.
You don’t scale.
And the tentacles never stop moving.
The Real Equation
Here’s what the Octopus is trying to solve:
| ROLE | DEMAND |
|---|---|
| Partner | Be emotionally available and not weirdly tired all the time |
| Parent | Be present, patient, playful, and pay for everything |
| Professional | Be driven, capable, calm, inspiring, and never offline |
| Provider | Earn enough to justify your absence |
| Self | Sleep. Stretch. Read. Forgive. Somehow |
Add all that up, and you get:
Not enough of you to go around.
The Tentacle Tug-of-War
Each tentacle wants something different:
| TENTACLE | DEMAND |
|---|---|
| Provider | Work more. Provide more. Prove more. |
| Perfectionist | Do it all. Miss nothing. Drop nothing. |
| Guilt | You’re failing someone, right now. |
| Wounded Kid | Don’t become who they feared you’d be. |
| Fuck-It | Ghost everyone. Watch YouTube. Burn it down. |
There is no equilibrium here.
Just motion sickness.
Balance is a Lie
What we call “balance” is usually just scheduling exhaustion across multiple domains.
You don’t feel rested. You just feel guilty in new areas.
You show up at work and feel bad about not being home.
You show up at home and feel bad about not doing more.
You rest and feel bad about everything.
Eventually, the Octopus can’t hold it all together.
So it does what it always does when overloaded:
It breaks something small. Then something big.
You’ve Dropped the Ball
Again.
You forgot the school thing.
You missed the deadline.
You snapped at your partner.
You ghosted the group chat.
The system failed.
So you build a new one.
Next time, you’ll plan better.
Next time, you’ll do less.
Next time, you’ll be balanced.
But there’s no next time fix. Just a pattern. Just a loop.
What’s Left
You’re still standing. Kind of.
Not balanced. Not thriving.
But aware.
And maybe awareness is the only real shift.
Because now, instead of asking:
“How do I juggle it all?”
You ask:
“What can I let drop?”
And you choose one thing that matters.
You let the rest wobble.
And you call that peace.
Part V of the Decision-Making Octopus series
Read the full Octopus series →
Next up: The Octopus and the Inner War →
