The strength isn't in choosing a side. It's in holding both.
A blog about the backlash against Steven Bartlett caught my attention this week. The backlash has been all about the clip with Steven where he shares that a few glasses of wine "ruined three days" resulting in worse sleep, skipped gym and underperformance. The core theses of the blog I read is that: "a life well-lived is not a life well-optimised." (link in references)
I understand where the author is coming from. On one hand we have been immersed in the culture of optimization of almost everything in our lives in search for productivity, efficiency, health and longevity. We follow the gurus starting from Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman to Tim Ferriss, Peter Attia, Steven Bartlett and others.
On the other hand we are seeing the Gen Z trends of checking out, taking week long 'doing nothing' retreats and living life on the fly. With this clear split we are trying to create a connection and belonging that stems from philosophy more than community.
Going beyond wellness, I see the same split in the leaders I work with. Some who cannot switch off: always on, always optimising, treating rest as a risk.
Others who have let the structure go entirely – running on instinct, resisting any routine, treating discipline itself as the enemy. It looks like 2 different challenges and yet, the underlying root cause is the same.
Each has resolved the same tension by picking a side. One holds on to control. The other lets go of it completely. Neither can hold both. Because picking a side is easier, it spares us the discomfort of holding two true things at once.
And this is genuinely hard for the human mind.
The Both/And.
Why does it have to be either a rigid schedule and tracking everything, or being in flow and living in the moment?
Why can't it be doing what is relevant and helpful for the task at hand?
Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein called this splitting: carving the world into all-good and all-bad so we don't have to tolerate that both live in the same place.
In leadership it translates as follows: the optimiser splits off rest as weakness; the “free spirit” splits off discipline as oppression.
Holding both is what Klein called the depressive position ( the naming does feel counter intuitive), and it is considered to be a developmental achievement.
Anton Obholzer, former Chief Executive of the Tavistock & Portman, in a podcast interview with Simon Western, said: "If you are operating in the depressive position at about 85% of your capacity to function, you are doing pretty damn well." This position is not easy to be in and very easy to fall out of.
Over past few weeks I have conducted several interviews for research purpose and it’s been insightful to observe the habits of very successful leaders and athletes. Many of them do follow very rigorous schedules and routines, which allow them to be in their prime mindset, performance, judgment and ability to be present.
However, they also take time to switch off and let go and do things that feel fun, whether that is to rest, to be there for those who matter, or simply taking time to detach.
I believe this ability to hold paradox in their minds and in their behaviors is what enables their success.
INSEAD professor Ella Miron-Spektor and colleagues found that people who can hold a tension rather than rush to resolve it perform better and think more creatively precisely when pressure is highest and the ones who collapse it into a single answer are the ones it breaks. They said: "the problem is how we think about the problem." In other words: the tension was never the problem. Our need to resolve it was.
From my observation holding both starts with 2 capacities these individuals have developed well: self-awareness and self-compassion.
Role of self-awareness and self-compassion.
Self-awareness – knowing ourselves well enough to build routines that actually serve our goals, not routines we inherit from a podcast, book or someone else.
Self-compassion. Kristin Neff, who has researched it for over two decades, defines it simply: treating yourself with the same kindness you'd offer a good friend who was struggling.
Leaders often mistake it for being soft. It isn't. Self-compassion is what keeps us in touch with our own minds and bodies and gives us permission to change direction when something else is needed, even if that means a temporary slip in the routine.
The fear is that if we let ourselves off the hook, we'll never get back on. The evidence shows other way. Psychologists Juliana Breines and Serena Chen (2012) found that people who met their own failures with compassion were more motivated to improve afterwards, not less. They tried harder.
It isn't permission to quit. It's what lets us adjust course without feeling it means the end of everything we've built or hoped for.
I'll use myself as an example here. I track my sleep, my recovery, my training load. I've trained in some form for over twenty years. The last few weeks were intense. Too many commitments, too many deliverables and something had to give. What gave was the gym. I simply couldn't fit it. Now the heavy stretch has passed and I'm back, and it was fine to let it go.
A few years ago I'd have done it differently — pushed through anyway, or not forgiven myself for the break.
The missing piece has been self-compassion. It also has been about the ability to accept the situation without falling into two opposites: Neither is helpful. What is helpful is permission based on self-awareness not living on others’ expectations.
This inverts the whole optimization story. If one is so rigid that they can't bend – it is not a strength. It is a defence against the discomfort of choosing. The real capacity is to let the routine go on purpose and then pick it back up, without either of these moves meaning something about our own worth.
My invitation is to see that 'track everything' and 'track nothing' are both external prescriptions. Expanded capacity to hold paradox and tension is the ability to author our own.
So the question isn't whether we're disciplined enough or free enough. It's whether we can trust ourselves to know which the moment is asking for.
The strength isn't in choosing. It's in holding both.
Reflection: Where in your life have you resolved a tension by choosing, when the harder, truer move was to hold both?
Warmly,
References
Breines, J. G., & Chen, S. (2012). "Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(9), 1133–1143. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167212445599
Miron-Spektor, E., Ingram, A., Keller, J., Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2018). "Microfoundations of Organizational Paradox: The Problem Is How We Think About the Problem." Academy of Management Journal, 61(1), 26–45. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2016.0594 (accessible summary: https://knowledge.insead.edu)
Neff, K. D. (2023). "Self-Compassion: Theory, Method, Research, and Intervention." Annual Review of Psychology, 74, 193–218. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031047
Obholzer, A. (2026). "The Emotional Life of Organisations with Anton Obholzer" (interview by Simon Western). Edgy Ideas podcast, Episode 107, 28 May 2026. https://open.spotify.com/episode/65PXSO61Ux1x1DNvvuYVVL
Segal, H. (1988). Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein. London: Karnac.
The Talent Director (2026). "What the Attacks on Steven Bartlett Say About a Shift in Our Culture." Substack, 7 June 2026. https://nadsdt.substack.com/p/what-the-attacks-on-steven-bartlett