How to Find the Right Work-Life Balance: 6 Steps
Earlier in the month I confessed that I really don’t work all that hard at my business anymore but when I posted my February stats I complained several times that my stats could have been a lot better. I used to work every spare minute I had, to the detriment of my family life but then I took it to the other extreme of refusing to do any work if I was able to spend time with my loved ones. This approach didn’t work for me either so now I’m trying to find the right balance.
The Dangers of Working Too Hard
Photo by Piero Sierra
When I first started out with this business my situation was much like that of many others; I had a full time job, a family at home, and I started working online in my spare time. What happened was that as the weeks went by I dedicated more and more of my ’spare’ time to my online business but I began to neglect what had previously been important to me.
I spent less time with my family, I stopped exercising, and stopped doing hobbies that I usually would have spent time on. In my case this had quite an adverse effect as the relationship with my partner at the time broke down. This wasn’t totally due to my work, but my habit of putting work before family time had been a theme in my life for many years and it took its toll.
I’ve also heard stories of people who manage to work very hard and still have a great family life but their health suffers. There are many aspects to life and some of them are common to everybody. We all need to look after our health, we all need to work on our relationships - whether they are family, friends, co-workers, whatever. Most of us also need to contribute in some way which often takes the form of ‘work’. Every person has needs which are important to them - such as religion for example.
My point is that life is complex and although ‘work’ often takes up the bulk of a waking day, it is not the entire focal point of life. We must not work so hard that other essential elements suffer.
What many people forget is that in order to work well, we need those other things too. How effectively can you work when you’re feeling exhausted or ill? How can you be inspired and creative when you don’t have the support of those around you and you’re constantly being nagged to get off the computer to spend some time with your kids. Everything effects everything else. No single aspect of life operates in isolation.
The Dangers of Working Too Little
Photo by rogiro
What I fell into recently was the trap of doing ‘just enough’ to get by. That usually meant responding to emails and blog comments and ensuring that I had a post out on the blog. Some days I didn’t even manage that - I published a total of 23 posts in February.
Taking this approach hasn’t been all bad because I managed to get a few semi-decent posts out on the blog but the growth and traffic levels were not what I had hoped for. However the real problem is that I’ve neglected all the other aspects of my business. To those of you who are new to this blog let me just very briefly sum up what I do:I try to make money online through various projects and I use this blog to publicly document my progress.
The problem is that although the blog is one of the assets that I am trying to develop, it is primarily here to report the progress on my other projects and if I don’t work on those then not only will the majority of my income dry up but I won’t have anything to blog about! My income for February was good - $2003 however this came mainly from my ebook and if you look at the project page for the ebook you’ll see that the vast majority of the work was done in January.
In fact, throughout February all I did was investigate the idea of promoting it using Web 2.0, abandon that idea and then released an update. That’s not a lot to show for a supposed month’s worth of effort is it? It would be okay if I had spent time on other projects but I didn’t and I am still very far behind on some of the membership sites that I belong to. All I’ve done in February is the minimum I could get away with.
How to Find the Right Balance
Photo by VCU Tompkins-McCaw
1 - Decide What’s Important
Different people will have different priorities at certain times of their lives. At various stages of my life I can recall when different things were of a high priority for me. After some major surgery and several weeks in hospital, my health became the most important factor. Whilst at University my studies were top of the list and right now my family & friends come top.
Sit down and think about what is really important in your life and how important it is. What would happen if you let something slide?
2 - Figure Out Your ‘Musts’
Motivational speaker Tony Robbins taught me the difference between a ‘must’ and a ’should’. We always manage to find time for those things that we decide we must do and its the things we think we should do that get left by the way side. I think everybody has their set of musts but not many people really think about what they are.
Be careful setting your musts though - some people tend to elevate ’shoulds’ into ‘musts’ status because they think they should :-) The result is that they over commit. A common one amongst bloggers is “I must post every day”. If that’s truly feasible for you then fine but if not it can lead to a string of sub-standard posts.
3 - Focus Your Attention
Very often we only have snippets of time available for any particular activity - perhaps an hour or two. I’m one of those people who constantly feels somewhat distracted and as a result I’m very good at filling up a couple of hours with low priority work that doesn’t achieve any of my musts. Unless you have an abundance of time on your hands, the only way you can really make progress is to decide that you will totally focus on what you are doing at the time and give it your all.
If you’re working on your online business then work on the most important thing you can and ignore everything else. Build that niche site you’ve been thinking about, start writing the ebook you’ve been putting off, crank out a killer blog post. Don’t read your email, or blogs (yeah put this blog down right now and go do something useful!) or click that Stumble button etc.
If you’re spending time with your family, then really be there with them. That doesn’t mean just vegging out in front of the TV together. Do something fun, have a conversation. If you’re exercising then really go for it - sweat a bit!
4 - Procrastinate The Unnecessary
With this online business there are lots of little jobs that I kinda need to do but aren’t that important such as keeping abreast of the industry by reading various newsletters and blogs. I used to try and keep on top of this daily but when you add that to the daily work that must be done such as responding to my real emails, the morning is gone before I’ve really done anything.
From now on, I file away all that stuff and do it at those times when I can’t concentrate fully on my real work such as a Saturday morning when there’s half a dozen kids running around the house.
What work fills your time that you can safely procrastinate on?
5 - Trust Your Instincts
Human emotions are a powerful thing and those gut feelings that we experience are there to guide us and yet so many people ignore them. I’ve found that my instinct will tell me when something is not right. For example, I don’t need to keep checking my weight these because I can just instinctively feel if I’ve not been eating right or slacking on the exercise.
If I’ve not spent enough time with family or not called a friend for a while I’ll get that nagging feeling in the back of my mind. I listen to these now. Similarly, I’ve had just the opposite recently and my nagging feelings were telling me that I wasn’t putting enough effort into my work.
Try to get used to the idea of trusting your instincts. What are you feeling? What are those feelings trying to tell you? When your life is all in balance you’ll feel good and when something isn’t right you’ll feel bad in some way. It takes practice, but just try and examine those feelings and learn to trust your instincts.
6 - Reevaluate Often
I’ve been here before; I’m always rescheduling my time and trying to re-priorise everything and that’s ok because things change and you need to adapt as you go along. My priorities are different now to how they were six months ago and my work has changed so my list of musts is also different. I’m sure it will be even more different in another six months.
If you can learn to trust your instincts as I explained in the previous section then you might not need to do this as much but sometimes you can get so caught up in your day to day work that you ignore those nagging feelings. If this is the case for you then make a point of setting time at regular intervals to just sit and think about your life and what you want from it. Go back through these steps of deciding what’s important, figuring out your musts and so on.
Conclusion
photo credit: g e n e v i e v e
I believe that the key to an all-round happy life is balance. That may be my star sign (Libra) having an influence there but I’ve always found in the past that when I focused too much on one thing at the expense of other things that I found myself unhappy and sometimes the negative consequences were quite catastrophic.
Follow these steps to find a healthy balance in your life and be happier in every way :)
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Mike Huang
March 4, 2008
Excellent read again Caroline. Your posts are soo long, but I love it :) It takes me a while, but I think I have a lot to learn. Thanks!
-Mike
Mike Huang’s last blog post..Guest Posting’s True Infinite Power