We’ve all struggled with it: the elusive, frustratingly vague concept of work-life balance. For creative entrepreneurs like professional photographers, this balance can feel nearly impossible. How do you become a high achiever while balancing a full personal life?
Lindsay Vastola has been pondering this question for years, first as a corporate manager, then as a fitness coach, and now as an esteemed speaker and head of the professional development company VastPotential. What she learned is that high-achieving professionals aren’t really seeking work-life balance. What they want are strategies for managing the everyday demands of work and life—without sacrificing one for the other. That requires a plan for behavioral change and the necessary mindset shifts that come with it. “It’s about giving them the mindsets that help them perform in all aspects of their lives,” she says.
Vastola will present lessons from her work at Imaging USA 2025 Feb. 2-4, in her program, “Tactics of Healthy High Achievers in Business,” with some key tactics shared here.
Lindsay Vastola
THE MYTH OF BALANCE
One of the first and most critical concepts Vastola wants people to understand is that work-life balance is a myth—or at least it’s such an enormous undertaking that it feels nearly impossible. Part of the problem is that people place unrealistic expectations on themselves. They think balance means everything is fluid, everything is happy, and they’re spending exactly the same amount of time on work, family, and rest. But few things in life are that neat, she explains. Schedules can easily change, and when you stack a few out-of-balance days together, it’s easy to feel like everything has gone off the rails. So, instead of work-life balance, think of it as “work-life integration,” says Vastola. Ask yourself how you can integrate your work and your personal life into a big picture that, over time, allows you to excel at both.
STARTING FROM THE END
One way to move toward better work-life integration is to start with the end in mind, and then work backward to create your ideal day. “What does an ideal day look like, where you’re presenting your best self in your business, you’re moving the needle, you’re confident, you’re following up with clients, you’re showing up for your family, you’re finding time to exercise, your house is decently clean, all those things?” asks Vastola. “When we start with that end goal, we can reverse engineer what is required to achieve that kind of ideal day.”
So, start by figuring out how to achieve that ideal day. Then work on stringing together a few of those winning days. You’re not going to win every day. Photographers often have schedules at the mercy of their clients, or the cadence of their assignments. That’s OK, Vastola notes. Every day isn’t going to be perfect. But if you can manage to put together more good days than bad, and eventually build up to winning the day 70% to 80% of the time, you’ll be more resilient when life throws you off your planned path.
“When we start with that end goal, we can reverse engineer what is required to achieve that kind of ideal day.”
BUILDING RESILIENCE
“Imagine your life is a dart board, and at the center, the bullseye is where you’re winning the day,” says Vastola. “What are you doing at your center that keeps you performing at a high level? Then recognize what’s going on around the sides that pulls you away from that center.”
Resilience is the ability to recognize when you’re getting pulled away from your best, being aware that it’s happening, and then creating a plan to pull yourself back toward center, she says. To do this effectively, Vastola recommends planning three activities that will help you recenter. These go-to recalibration tactics to clear your mind could be as simple as taking a walk, stepping outside for fresh air, or reading a book.
LOVING YOUR WORK
What if you love your work, and it consumes a large part of your life by choice? This is common for photographers, because you are your work. Your product is closely tied to your professional and artistic identity, and it can be hard to separate the work from the personal. Yet the pull between these supposedly distinct areas of your life is what causes guilt. You always feel like you’re robbing from one to feed another.
Those feelings are normal, says Vastola, and they can be managed. Own your passion for your work and appreciate it, but create guardrails. This is about setting boundaries, which often means compartmentalizing your time. To do this, write down the important categories of your work and your personal life. Assign time to each of these compartments, focus on that compartment during the allotted time, and don’t get distracted.
Your product is closely tied to your professional and artistic identity, and it can be hard to separate the work from the personal.
TALKING IT OUT
Communicate this process to your loved ones. Talk about expectations and let them know when the time spent on certain compartments will need to change. Empathize with the people around you, but also help them understand what’s important to you. For example, let’s say your busiest season for work is coming up. Communicate this to your family and help them understand: This month is going to be very busy, and I may be spending more time on work than usual. I understand this might be difficult for you, but I love my work, and it’s important for me to do well at it. When I can succeed in my work, it helps me show up better for you. And when this busy period ends, I’m going to be fully committed to our time together.
CHANGING YOUR MINDSET
Eventually, the process comes down to adapting your mindset to serve your concept of success. Vastola suggests making a defining statement about yourself: I want to be the kind of person who …
It could be a variety of things. I want to be the kind of person who charges what I’m worth. I want to be the kind of person who exercises every morning. I want to be the kind of person who stands my ground with demanding clients.
“Imagine your life is a dart board, and at the center, the bullseye is where you’re winning the day. What are you doing at your center that keeps you performing at a high level?"
Consider the attributes you’ll need to become that kind of person. This process is about identifying skill gaps. Look at people who do these things well, consider the skills they have that help them be successful in these areas, and figure out which of those skills you’ll need to work on. It’s a matter of taking you from the person you are today to the person you want to be, and creating the roadmap to get there.
Once you’ve created that roadmap, turn the sentence into an “I am” statement. I am the kind of person who charges what I’m worth. I am the kind of person who exercises every morning. I am the kind of person who stands my ground with demanding clients.
When you state it, and believe it, it’s much easier to follow up with the appropriate action. “That’s all mindset is,” says Vastola. “It’s a conversation in your head.”
THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Becoming a high-achieving professional with efficient work-life integration isn’t a single path that you’re either on or off. Often, it’s a curving road with distractions and diversions, Vastola says, but as long as you’re making progress, you’re doing well. “People tend to say, ‘I’m so off track,’ but the idea of a track is so rigid,” she adds. “Whereas if we say, ‘I’m on course,’ we allow ourselves more room to maneuver. Think of it as a road with guardrails. The destination is still the same, but you can meander a little within those guardrails and still head in the right direction. It’s progress over perfection. Even on days that are less than ideal, you still may have moved in the right direction. And if you keep that momentum going, you’re doing great.”
Jeff Kent is editor-at-large.
Tags: entrepreneurial
