When people outside of law school ask me what makes it so challenging, they’re usually surprised by my answer. The common perception is that law school is relentlessly difficult—confusing concepts, overwhelming reading, and a toxic, one-upping culture. I don’t see it that way. Sure, the work is demanding, but it’s not impossible. The real challenge that I have found lies in finding the right balance: trying to juggle everything I want to achieve without tipping too far in one direction. I’ve always thought that being successful is not like pushing a giant boulder up a mountain; but rather, it’s like trying to stay steady on a teeter totter. Since the new school year has started, I have not been able to find a good balance. The most prevalent example of this is with my Oura Ring.

If you’ve never heard of it, let me explain. An Oura Ring is a physical ring worn on your finger that tracks your body’s signals to give insights into sleep, recovery, and daily activity. It monitors things like heart rate, body temperature, movement, and blood oxygen levels, then translates that data into scores that show how well you’ve slept, how ready your body is to perform, and how active you’ve been throughout the day. It focuses less on constant notifications and more on long-term patterns of health and balance. It gives you three main scores during the day: how well you slept, how ready you are for the day, and how active you’ve been over the span of the day and the prior week. If you have a score above 85, then it’s considered “optimal.” The problem is that it’s hard to get, obviously. And by focusing on trying to get all three up to optimal is that it often becomes counterintuitive getting there.

Over the last few days, I’ve been getting annoyed because I’ve really needed some time to relax and decompress, which coincides with getting my “restorative” time up. My “readiness” score had continuously kept going down and my legs have been killing me lately from doing more cardio and standing more during the day (I also need new inserts for my shoes). So I’ve taken this weekend to reset, watch some TV, and try to be inactive and not read so things can get reset and go back up. But of course, in doing so, I haven’t gone to the gym since Friday and now my activity score is going down. In trying to keep it balanced, one side goes down while the other goes up.

And this extends far beyond my Oura Ring scores. My life is full of priorities I consider important: tracking calories and macros, keeping up with vitamins, hitting gym goals, staying active in extracurriculars like Law Review, SBA, and Moot Court, keeping a social life, managing stress and finances, and maintaining relationships with friends here, friends back home, and family. Each one matters, but they all compete for time. Even the things I enjoy conflict with each other. Playing Rematch on Xbox with my friends back home is a priority, but the late-night games cut into my sleep and reading because of the time difference. Cutting weight helps my health and gym goals, but it competes with going out to eat or drink socially. No matter which way I lean, something else gets pushed aside. For a long time, I thought I was failing because my life wasn’t balanced enough. But I’ve come to realize that the idea of balance is inherently flawed and impractical.

Balance is about proportion and making sure each part of life (work, health, relationships, rest) gets attention without one side overwhelming the others. But balance is static, like forcing a teeter totter to stay perfectly level. It requires constant recalibration, and that’s impossible when life keeps shifting. No two days are exactly the same and life gets in the way. My current schedule is a great example: Mondays and Wednesdays I’m in class from 10–4, Tuesdays and Thursdays I only have an hour, and the rest of the week I’m free. Each day demands something different, so what I accomplish has to adjust with it. Trying to apply the same routine, or keep every area evenly weighted, is exhausting. Quite frankly, it’s unrealistic. It’s just like a teeter totter. You don’t try to keep it level. You ride it for the motion and go up and down with it. That’s why what we need isn’t balance; it’s rhythm.

Rhythm is different from balance. Where balance is about keeping things even, rhythm is about finding a flow. It’s the natural cadence of how your priorities rise and fall, how certain days demand more in one area and less in another, and how you move with that instead of fighting against it. Rhythm is dynamic. It accepts the up-and-down nature of life and turns it into a pattern you can sustain. When you’re in rhythm, your efforts don’t feel like constant recalibration; they’re in motion with a beat you can follow. It’s less about forcing equilibrium and more about syncing with the pace of your own life. As the beat of your life changes, so should your priorities and keeping it in sync. Being in rhythm is equally about being proactive with your priorities so you can achieve what you want but also about letting yourself go with the flow by being adaptable.

For me, this meant changing a few things in order to do more. I had to take a step back and stop looking at things from the day-to-day and start looking at long term trends. On my Oura Ring, I had to stop fixating on my specific scores each day, but rather look at the week and month-long trend of direction my scores were heading. If something’s off long-term, you adjust. From a scheduling perspective, I had to step back and start planning week to week. Monday’s and Wednesday’s are just about surviving the lectures and keeping my head above water academically. It’s not practical to add in a social activity because I can, so I adjusted to a day that works better. As such, I feel a lot more confident that I can move the long-term trend upwards in most aspects of my life even if there is some day-to-day fluctuations that aren’t ideal.

If you’re struggling to be content and happy, then start by looking at your priorities. Not everything can carry equal weight all the time, and that’s okay. Instead of trying to force balance every single day, ask yourself what deserves your focus over the course of a week, a month, or a semester. Some days will have different priorities: some will be focused on academics, others toward health, others toward relationships. That doesn’t mean you’re failing in certain areas while exceeding in others, it means you’re living in rhythm. When you zoom out and see the broader picture, the fluctuations aren’t setbacks; they’re part of the beat that you’re drumming to. Satisfaction doesn’t come from keeping every piece perfectly level, but from trusting that over time, the rise and fall evens out into progress.

Life is not meant to be perfectly balanced. It’s meant to move in rhythm. So stop forcing the teeter totter to stay level and start enjoying the ride. When you move in rhythm with your priorities, that’s when progress and happiness begin to show up.

-Colby