‘Get that through your thick skulls’: Martha Stewart, 85, says work-life balance is a myth — and people who find it are ‘boring.’ Do you agree?

At 85, Stewart still starts her workday at 7 a.m. and has never been shy about her work ethic. But her comments come at a time when many Americans are struggling to juggle their careers and personal lives without burning themselves out.

According to Gallup, 27% of U.S. employees reported feeling burned out at work very often or always. It’s not necessarily the long hours taking a toll. Gallup found that how employees experience their workload, including whether they feel supported by their managers and have realistic expectations, plays a bigger role in burnout than the number of hours they work.

So is work-life balance an unrealistic ideal we’ve spent years chasing, or is it something people can actually achieve?

Balance is boring

Stewart admits that some people do manage to strike a balance between work and life. But she suspects they’re the exception, not the rule. And perhaps a little boring, too.

“This thing about balance, I don’t know who thought about that—but it just doesn’t work,” she said. “Maybe infrequently—and I’m jealous of those people—but they’re also boring.”

Stewart is no stranger to hard work. Before she became known as the “doyenne of the domestic arts,” she was working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. She later traded finance for food, launching a catering business out of her Connecticut home. By 1990, she had turned her passion for homemaking into Martha Stewart Living magazine, followed by a television show of the same name in 1993.

Through bestselling cookbooks, television appearances and retail partnerships, Stewart built a lifestyle empire. When her company went public in 1999, she became America’s first self-made female billionaire.

But her rise to the top wasn’t without controversy. In 2005, Stewart served five months in federal prison after being convicted of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and making false statements to investigators in connection with a stock sale. For some, a prison sentence might have meant the end of a career. But after she was released Stewart returned to work, determined to rebuild her reputation and the business she’d spent decades creating.

“I could’ve just been a miserable, has-been housewife, but I didn’t let that happen to myself. And I’m so happy I didn’t,” she said in her 2024 Netflix documentary.

The hustle doesn’t stop

Stewart’s work ethic is impressive. But not everyone has the luxury of choosing how much they work.

“There’s a significant difference between working really long hours because you’ve chosen to build something you believe in versus working long hours because you can’t afford not to,” Sarah Noll Wilson, President and Founder at The Noll Wilson Group told Moneywise. “We need to stop pretending like everyone has the same choices.”

Executives have their own pressures, but Wilson points out that they often have something many workers don’t: control over their schedules. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 36% of wage and salary workers lacked flexible schedules over their schedules in 2024 and 2025, with their employers deciding their hours without their input.

Wilson says executives’ freedom can also create pressure for employees, who may feel obligated to match their boss’s schedule, even if nobody explicitly asks them to. But the number of hours we work may only be part of the problem.