Too Busy to Fit Something Else In? Bull. Read This.

Are you looking at the world through “victim-colored glasses?”  If you’re telling yourself that you just don’t have time to do something (or to start something), you may be playing the victim card once again.

It’s easy to see external problems everywhere we look - “Work is keeping me too busy,” “There’s just so much going on with the kids,” “I’m running behind in everything …”  But when we reinforce the habit of shifting responsibility for our circumstances to something external, we learn to blame everyone and everything … rather than looking inward to what needs to change in ourselves.  Sooner or later you’re going to end up hitting the roof … or seeing things that aren’t there.

Now, don’t get me wrong - it’s certainly true that external people and things shape your circumstances, but you shape them a hell of a lot more by how you react to them - by what choices you make in spite of them.  Unfortunately, for a lot of us, a lot of the time, that “choice” is to let the external factors bully us.  We don’t do it consciously, we just think that we have no power to change them (or to get ourselves motivated).

(I call bullshit on that one.  So does Nick, if his last post is any indication.)

One Dead-Simple Strategy For Fitting Something In Or Jumpstarting Your Drive

Think back to a day when you had a bunch of stuff to do that had to be done that day - no excuses, no extensions.  You had 3 or 4 things that just had to be completed by the end of the day.  You knew you could do it, as long as you kept focused.

Then BAM! - some emergency happened.  Maybe your kid broke his arm at school and needed to go to the doctor.  Maybe the power went out for a while.  Maybe some emergency project or urgency came to you via telephone, email, or screaming person.  An hour or two of your day just went up in smoke.

What did you do?  You got mega-focused, handled the emergency, and rushed like hell to get the other stuff done because it HAD TO BE DONE.  And ta-da, you finish the day a badass high achiever.

How did you do it?  By tapping into the focus-creating adrenaline that comes when you have to handle a whole lot of tasks in a short amount of time.  You went into emergency mode: Get it done, don’t stop slamming, jump from one thing to the next.  Badda-BOOM.

To Get More Done, Learn To Shift Into Emergency Mode

Let’s say you have a hella busy workday and you have tons to do.  Fair enough.  You don’t think you have time to go to the gym, or write that blog post, or do X, Y or Z.  You have 2 choices:

• Blame something external (like Stalker Roof) for screwing up your schedule

• Flip the Emergency Switch and do all your other tasks faster.

Simply put, you can pull a fast one on your brain by telling yourself you have an emergency appointment - you have to do X / Y/ Z for an hour - you have to - and so you’ve got to truck like crazy to get all your other stuff done today to fit it in.  Mentally pretend it’s as important as an emergency room visit and you’ll sense a shift going on in your brain - the shift that makes you stop wasting time, losing focus and working at a fraction of your potential.

It sounds goofy, but it works.  When you tell yourself you want to do things, you can afford to be slack, and push it to tomorrow.  But if you tell yourself you have to do something, you can tap into the juicy adrenaline goodness that helps you get more done.

And if you don’t believe you can muster up the mental psych-out?  Make it real.  Do that thing you’ve been putting off first thing that day, and then - uh oh - you’ve truly got less time to work on all your other have-to tasks.  And that will get your adrenaline in gear for real.

The Moral Of The Story

• You can push yourself harder than you think.  You do it all the time when you live reactively.  Now do it on purpose.

Reframe your ‘to-do’ list for today into a ‘must-do-by-3pm’ (or something similar) and surprise yourself with how much faster you can get things done.

Incoming Deadlines Make You Work Faster, Period.

(PS - get free updates to this blog by email or RSS - or Stalker Roof will be stalking you next …)

Pen To Paper: Getting Clear On What Work-Life Balance Means To You

Last post we talked about the 7 fear triggers that keep us from making progress on creating a work-life balance.  Trigger #7 focused on the confusion that comes when we’re not really sure where to start.  Commenter James Chartrand from Men with Pens sums up what a lot of people are feeling on that post:

If we don’t know what balance truly is (i.e., more money, more happy… what does that mean, really?), then how do we know what our goal is? Without a goal, how can we take that first step?  Or, should we rather accept we have no clue where we’re going but it has to be better than going nuts or dropping dead from exhaustion?

It’s Ok To Have No Clue (As Long As You Start Looking For Them)

Confusion is a real pain in the ass, because it gets you all locked up inside.  With so many directions to choose from, where do you start going?  What if you choose the wrong direction?  What if you screw it up?  These thoughts (and many more) spin around in our heads every day, contributing to that sense of helplessness that makes us feel like getting balanced is an impossible ideal.  Rather than take action, we avoid it and just try to keep up with the pace of our life as it is.

The tricky thing about being uncertain is how the uncertainty itself can paralyze us from making the time to get clarity on the problem in the first place - the ultimate catch-22. The antidote to that paralysis, fortunately, is something you already have available to you:  Pen and paper.  (Or, for the more tech-addicted, a text file / Word document / whatever.)  That’s all you need to start searching for clues to what balance means to you.

As James said above, it’s hard to take that first step when you don’t have a goal in mind.  So let’s talk about how you can start hunting down the clues that will give you a clearer idea of what you’d actually have to do to feel more balanced.

First, Draw A Big Line

Take that piece of paper you grabbed and draw a big ‘ol line down the middle of it, separating it into a left and a right side.  On the left side, write “What I Want” and on the right side scribble down “What I Don’t Want.”  We’re going to ignore the “What I Want” side and focus on the other one to begin with, for two reasons.

• Reason #1: “What You Want” Can Stress You Out. If you’ve read the 7 fear triggers post, you’ll see that “Overwhelm” is trigger #1.  If you add a whole bunch of things you want to your list, essentially you’re adding new goals to your plate - and if you’re already struggling to keep up with it all right now this is just going to stress you out.  It’s probably the main reason most people don’t have a clear idea of what balance means to them in the first place.  It’s just a list of more things you don’t have time for.

• Reason #2: “What You Want” Can Create “Writer’s Block.” There’s an old saying that says there’s nothing quite as frightening as a blank sheet of paper.  It’s true.  Face a blank page, and it can be intimidating.  It’s where the whole “what if I write stuff that’s not good enough, or stupid, or wrong, or impossible?” thing comes into play. On the other hand, thinking of “What I Don’t Want” is easy.  You can tap into that vein pretty simply, because you think about these things on a regular basis.  Every day, every week, every year, there are things you wish were different.  Things you hate dealing with in life.  You already know what you don’t want, to a large degree.

Next, Let Your Frustrations Out

Oh yeah, it’s time for some cathartic purging here.  Think of the things about your life that you just don’t want to experience anymore, things that throw everything out of balance.  Your list might include things like:

• “I don’t want to miss having dinner with my family anymore.”
• “I don’t want to work so much overtime.”
• “I don’t want my kids to feel like I don’t spend enough time with them.”
• “I don’t want to stay out of shape.”
• “I don’t want to keep putting off time for me.”
• “I don’t want to have a job that can screw up my schedule at the last minute.”
• “I don’t want to go another year without a vacation.”
• “I don’t want to feel so damned rushed all the time.”
• “I don’t want to put off X / Y / Z / Whatever any longer.”

You get the idea.  Let the internal pressure you’re feeling clue you in to what you feel like you’re missing, because that’s going to give you a lot of clarity.  Sometimes when we think of “what we want” we’re really thinking of what we imagine might make us happy … and we all know from experience that getting what we want doesn’t always give us what we thought it would.  Instead, tap into what you know you don’t want, and then you can get to the next step …

Decode The Pain And Get Some Clarity

In the next post of this work-life balance series we’ll get into how to use what you don’t want to figure out what you really do want (hint: it’s not just “finding the opposite”).  For now, just start with the exercise above to figure out where your work-life balance pain points are.  Keep that paper handy, and as the day goes by, be conscious of times when you feel pressured, stressed, and under-the-gun, and see if there’s more that you want to add there.  As you become more attuned to thinking about what you don’t want, you’ll uncover more areas of your life that you want to tweak.

Give this a shot, and be really honest with yourself as you do it.  And if you feel like it’s stressing you out to focus on all these things you don’t want, remind yourself that this is only the beginning, and what you’re uncovering here will be the ammunition you need to move your life in the direction you want it to go.

Take 15 minutes today with a pen and a piece of paper and you’ll be on your way.  (And don’t forget to subscribe to this blog by email or RSS to make sure you catch all the upcoming posts in this work-life balance series).

See you in the comment section,

Dave

Live Coaching & A Free Book If You Want It …

Procrastination and disorganization suck big time. If you’re trying to build your business - or even joust trying to hit some personal goals - these two progress killers can make you crawl under the covers and wish that life would magically get better for you.  But it won’t, not unless you get off your ass and make it happen.  (Gee, can you tell I’ve been there?  I have been, but I didn’t stay there, dammit.)

This Tuesday at 12pm Eastern I’ll be giving a live coaching teleseminar / webcast about how to immediately start getting organized and begin to crush procrastination so you can start getting things done.  No magic formulas, no gimmicks, and no “sounds good for you but it couldn’t work for me” advice.  What you’ll hear is about an hour of good stuff that will help you start turning the tide against the two big things that hose your ability to get more of what you want out of life.

Will your life change overnight?  Hell no.  Will it be better next week than it was last week?  If you listen, learn and take action, you’re damned right it will. Changing habits takes time, and isn’t it time you got started on trading some bad habits for ones that serve you?

The coaching is 12 bucks, you’ll get downloadable MP3s and PDF transcripts if you can’t make the call, and you’ll get a magical secret bonus that will make kicking bad-habit ass even easier - a free PDF of my 160+ page book, “What’s Holding You Back?” which you’ve probably seen on sale in the sidebar to the right.  (If you’ve already bought the book, I’ll find something else of value to pass your way).

Why You Should Breathe A Sigh of Relief

You know those people who offer teleseminars and it’s nothing but a sales pitch?  You won’t get that crap on this call.  I’m not going to try and sell you on anything during the call, so don’t sweat it.  The $12 is enough, consider it buying me lunch and a beer.

Four Calls In One (But I’m First In Line …)

This teleseminar  is actually a four-part series - I’ll be speaking Tuesday, but other speakers will be on Wednesday through Friday.  If you’re one of my readers who is running a business online, these speakers will be of interest to you. Lynn Terry, Wednesday’s speaker, is a stay at home single mom who has put food on the table for 10 years by making money online without being one of the scummy, spammy, string-them-up internet marketing used car salesman people.  (Hmm, I am pretty punchy today …)  Lynn’s been one of the “good influences” on me, so I’m looking forward to listening to her.

The other two speakers I don’t know, so, what can I say.  We’ll all learn something new.

So, if you’re a business builder, the other 3 calls should be of interest - but if you’re not, still sign up to hear my presentation and get my book for free.  It’s worth it, and hell yes I’m biased.  But I mean it.

I hope to see you on the call and will begin posting on the work-life balance series again soon.  In the meantime, keep on keepin’ on …

Dave

(Sorry, this was in the past … subscribe to catch the next one)

Life Balance Fear Alert: 7 Triggers That Make You Run Like Hell

Work-life balance is an elusive thing; we all want to be more balanced, but most of us feel like it is just outside of our reach.  As I’ve coached business owners from all walks of life over the last few years, I hear the same line over and over again - “When things settle down, I’ll have the time to work on balance.”    I’ve even caught myself saying it (much more than once).

But what I’ve found interesting is that few people I’ve spoken to can actually tell me what the concept of “balance” means to them.  They have a fuzzy idea of what a balanced life means - I hear things like “more time,” “better health,” “better relationships,” and so on … but nothing concrete.  It’s kind of like when people say they want to “make more money” or “be happier” … it’s a vague phrase that doesn’t carry a lot of detail.  And permitting a lack of detail on something you want is a great way to avoid approaching it.  But we do this on purpose, and we do it for a reason.

Why Getting Into Detail Can Be Scary

For many goals - and especially for balance - we rarely move beyond the definition of “more” or “happier.”  We may tell ourselves it’s just because we haven’t gotten around to it, but in reality it’s likely that there are fear-based factors that make us feel internal resistance to getting into detail (and building a battle plan) when it comes to achieving balance.

• Overwhelm. We tend to seek work-life balance when they we already overwhelmed, so the idea of carving out the time / effort to achieve it can often seem too complex - a huge project to add to their already maxed-out list of to-do items.

• Insecurity. When balance seems a far-away ideal, it’s easy to feel like it will simply never happen.  Though we don’t want to admit it, one part of us simply resigns itself to accepting that we’ll never have it while another part continues to yearn for it.  We feel like we just don’t have what it takes.

• Pressure. The word “balance” carries a strong emotional connection to the word “everything.”  It’s hard to imagine something being “kind of” balanced - it’s all or nothing in our minds.  And getting control of everything creates a huge amount of pressure - one that we frequently deal with by avoidance.

• Fear of Failure. We’ve tried to get “more balanced” before.  We’ve fallen flat on our face.  It hurts.  We don’t want it to hurt again.  Whether our fear is a conscious one or simply a behind-the-scenes emotion, it acts as a protection mechanism, helping to steer our thoughts away from getting more definition on what we really want.

• Fear of Success. What if you really had it all, and could have that magic work-life balance as early as tomorrow?  What new responsibilities would you have, and what new commitments would you be obligated to?  Even though you want to be balanced, your mind can easily push back against adding “more” to your plate.

• Fear of Loss. Imagine having everything.  Now imagine losing it.  If you’ve enjoyed the bliss of feeling “more balanced” in the past, you know how painful it is to have circumstances take that away from you.  Perhaps part of you is feeling that right now, and holding you back from taking more concrete action defining what you really want.

• Confusion & Embarrassment. When it all comes down to it, maybe you just don’t know where the hell to start.  Having a destination in mind - but not having a map - can cause a level of fear all by itself … the fear of admitting you don’t know something.  Sucks, don’t it?

The Way To Face Your Fear & Do It Anyway

A simple way to take the “big deal” out of work-life balance is to stop making it such a big deal in the first place. Regardless of what television, magazines, or your “has it all together” neighbor imply to you, Hear This: You don’t have to “have it all” to “have it.” Even just a small sip can begin to quench your balance thirst.

Take the pressure off.  Instead of focusing on how big a thing “total work-life balance” can be, set your mind towards doing one small thing today to get you on the path to getting “more balanced.”  It’s just like losing weight - if you focus on “losing 50 pounds,” good luck with dealing with the stress that brings.  If you focus on “replace one soda a day with a glass of water,” you’re on your way.  As the saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.”  (Note to self: Don’t mention “weight loss” and “eating elephants” in the same paragraph ever again.)

Taking small actions can help you fly under the fear radar and give you a massive confidence / emotional boost at the same time.  You can begin getting balanced, even if you’re too damned busy (read this post as a starting point).  Start with something manageable, something small and achievable enough that doesn’t activate one of those make-or-break triggers, and start feeling like you have more control over getting your life in balance than you do today.

Upcoming posts will go into tips for how to start defining what balance means to you and how to start making your battle plan for getting it.  Subscribe to this blog by email or RSS to make sure you don’t miss them.  And I’d love to her what your next “small step” is going to be in the comments below.

Review of SEO School - The Full Edition

I posted a recent mini review of SEO School a few weeks ago and promised a fuller, meatier review later when I had a chance to digest it all.  If you’ve been on the fence about this book and are looking for a solid review of SEO School that doesn’t pull back the punches, here goes.

Disclaimer: I know the author (Naomi) personally, which is good, because I’ve called her for a lot of follow-up advice on what I’ve learned in the book. But I only provide reviews on this blog for tools I use on a regular basis, so what you read below is based on experience, not fluff.  All links below are indeed affiliate links, but I think that’s fair given I’ve spent 2 hours working up this review for you, right?

This Book Isn’t For You … OR IS IT? (Dunn - Dunn -  Dunnnnnnnnnnn!)

If you’re an SEO master, this book isn’t going to teach you anything new.  This book is geared towards people who don’t have a whole lot of SEO knowledge to begin with. Which is funny, because there are layers of knowledge, and we don’t always know what we’re missing.  For example, I have some good knowledge of how to write SEO optimized articles (which I do a lot as a freelancer), so I feel fairly experienced in that area.  But after reading SEO School I realize I didn’t know much about optimizing my site itself.

So this book was a good read for me - and it may be for you as well if you don’t understand some of the finer points about optimizing link text, link position, “meta” and other stuff.  I sorely needed that on my blog, and this book was very helpful.  After reading to the end of SEO School, I made a lot of changes on my blog, and I’m already seeing an increase in traffic for keywords that are important to me.  Nothing insane (it’s only been a week), but it’s trending upward, which is exactly what I want.

Where This Book Can Really Save Your Ass

If you’re new to site optimization, the idea of mastering SEO can be intimidating.  There are people out there with $1000 home study courses packed with endless hours of all the things you have to do to rank #1 for your keyword serach terms.  I never really considered doing much SEO on my site because I didn’t want to devote all that time to learn the ins-and-outs of Google’s secret rules for ranking well … especially knowing that Google can will change it rules anytime it feels like it … and all that studying might be for nothing.

I’m not going to spend 50 hours honing my SEO skills.  It’s just not in the cards for me.  But what I really like about SEO School is that it let me get a huge SEO payoff with just an hour’s reading. How? It goes step by step through the most important thing an SEO beginner needs to know: how to stop making the simple, innocent mistakes that screw up your SEO in the first place.

Not too long ago I was speaking to a number of well known bloggers and one of them said, “I’m not Dave so I don’t know his keywords, but it seems to me he should have higher search traffic than he does currently.” I was thinking, “Yeah, tell me about it …” and frustrated that I didn’t know what to do.  But as I read through SEO School I began to see things I was doing with my site that seemed innocent enough, but that were putting an unintentional damper on my rankings.  Things that I didn’t think were important, but were.

What I Got Out Of This Book In The First Read-Through

Without giving the content of the book away, I’m going to break down the things that I was able to improve after reading SEO School.  It’s too soon to give definitive numbers as to how it’s working out, but I can tell you that I’m already seeing an increase in the search traffic I’m getting for the keywords related to my Becoming an Early Riser program.

Here’s what I’ve learned from SEO School:

• How the type of site I’m running determines the type of search terms I want to rank for. This is important because I was previously trying to rank for keywords I can’t hope to compete with at the moment - now I know how to pick more effective keyword phrases for the type of traffic I want.

• Why the keywords I didn’t think I wanted are actually better off for me. This was hard to deal with at first, but it makes sense when Naomi explains why this is the case.

• How to research (and learn from) my competition’s SEO tactics. This is something i didn’t do, because I didn’t have a good strategy for doing it.  Now I do.  Bwuhahahaha ….

• How to ethically influence the SEO effects I’m getting from other people’s sites. This wasn’t rocket science - but it did clue me in to a simple way to get a lot more “Google juice” from people who reference my site.

• Smarter ways to use my title tags, meta description, and page URLs. Not much I can say here without giving it away … but this stuff helped me a lot.

• How to optimize where links appear on the page (and what kind of links appear). I didn’t think this mattered much.  Turns out it matters tons.

Three Things To Consider Before Buying This Book

As strongly as I feel SEO School is well worth the $39 price, there are a few things you need to know before picking this up:

• Naomi swears like a sailor throught the entire book.  If you read her blog (Ittybiz), this is no surprise to you.  Some people might be offended by this; most people won’t.  She’s not “offensive” in anything she says, she just narrates the book with the same straight-up tone she uses in her blog.  I love it.

• This book does not teach “black hat” SEO.  if you’ve never heard of that term, basically “black hat” SEO involves tricks and scammy, sleazy stuff to game the Google system for instant high SEO rankings - basically the dark side of the force.  You can take over the universe using the power of the Dark Side, but sooner than you expect it, Google will cut off your hand with a lightsaber, blow up your fully operational battle station and bring balance to the Google force.  SEO School focuses on “White Hat” SEO, basically the good stuff that makes Google like you because you are playing by the rules, and Google will reward you with yummy search engine traffic and a promise to never let George Lucas destroy your childhood by producing three unbearble “prequels” to your website.

• This book will not make you rich overnight.  No book will.  But many people just can’t get that through their heads.  So if you get to the end of SEO School saying “hey, this doesn’t tell me how to be #1 tomorrow, dammit!” then you’ll just have to get over it.  What this book will tell you is how to get better results than you’re getting now.

And better results than you’re getting now is sweet, sweet stuff.  Even George Lucas can’t screw that up.

Tell Naomi that Dave sent you and download SEO School right now.

Work-Life Balance and The Weekend - Escape or Improve?

When the weekend comes, most people are (understandably) tempted to just “check out” and take their well-deserved escape from the daily grind.  Weekends are commonly viewed more as a vacation than as the  valuable resource they are, so many people halt all thoughts of work and just make plans to enjoy themselves.  (And there’s nothing wrong with that.  God knows we all need some time off to recharge and avoid burnout.)

Does Your Weekend Really Recharge You?

There’s nothing wrong with relaxing on the weekend; kicking back, “vegging out” and doing just enough “nothing” are definitely on my plate once I head home from the day job.  An ice-cold beer or two is certainly in the cards as well.

At the same time, though, if I let that become the entire focus of my weekend, I’ll end up unsatisfied, frustrated, and less-than-recharged come Monday morning.  I know this because I’ve done it far too many times.  Escape from the pressures of the week can be a necessary thing, but it’s only a single part of a balanced diet.

The key here is to make sure you’re not taking your weekend for granted and to view it as the perfect time to work on those work-life balance issues that have been stressing you out during the week (especially if you’ve had some time to work on defining them in your personal war room).  If you slate out some of that time on Saturday and Sunday to improve the overall level of fulfillment you have in your life - even if it’s just an hour - you’ll feel a big difference come Monday.

Rock Your Weekend, Revisited

If you’re a longtime reader you’ll remember the Rock Your Weekend challenge, where I urged you to take 60 minutes this weekend to do one of those fulfilling, necessary things you’ve been telling yourself you just don’t have the time for.  As you can see in the comments on that post, those 60 minutes can become an experience that takes a weight off your shoulders and makes you feel more balanced for the week to come.

So get yourself some “escape” time this weekend.  You deserve it.  But at the same time, make an appointment with yourself to revisit your war room and get a head start on living a more balanced life.  You’ll thank yourself for it.  (And join us in the Rock Your Weekend challenge!)

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you to subscribe to this blog by email or RSS.  You’ll thank yourself for that, too.

Fighting Work-Life Balance Stress: Attack Of The 50-Ft. Goals

As I sit in my war room pondering what work-life balance means to me, I’m struck by the cruel irony that I imagine all goal-oriented people must feel … my goals cause me a lot of stress.  Not an ounce or two of “oh, I’m running late” kind of stress, but a full metric crapton of “Dear God, can I actually do all this?” kind of stress.  The kind that turns your stomach in knots - the kind that I can wager we’re all familiar with.

I know where this comes from.  It comes from “Out There.”

The “Domesticated” Definition of Work-Life Balance

It’s hit me this morning that a lot of what I associate with the word “balance” has to do with perfection.  That balance means I have X amount of time with my kids, X amount of time with my wife, X amount of time with my goals while managing X amount of time with my day job.  That balance means everyone’s smiling, everyone’s happy, everything’s ideal and perfect.  Naturally, perfection is a pretty foolish bar to set, since it’s impossible to reach, but emotionally it’s hard to break away from that.

I should know that.  I mean, I really should know that.  I even talk about balance in my time management program.  But still, the emotion remains, and it’s a strong one, rooted in the sum of 32 years of messages from television, movies, pop culture, and the faces we all put on when we’re out and about in society.  the sum of all the messages you get from “Out There” rather than conscious decisions you make “Inside.”

I mean face it - when you think of someone who’s balanced, the image you get is of someone who “has it all together.” Who has plenty of time.  Who has a more “perfect” life than you.  And at some level we know that’s bullshit, because people have the same internal problems the world over.  But on the outside, we’re conditioned by everything we see, hear and feel that somehow things just come easier for other people, and that their lives have an aura of perfection.

Again, that’s bullshit.  I’ve done coaching for people making five and six figures a month, and I can tell you they shake in their shoes the same way we all do.  But modern culture has domesticated us, training us to believe that “If you just work hard, stay in school, follow all the rules and work a little overtime, everything will all balance out and you’ll have it all.  Good dog.”

The Enlightened View of Work Life Balance

I have a confession to make: I used the word enlightened in that header just to see how it looked.  Very Zen Habits. For a full four seconds I actually felt more sophisticated.  :-)   Seriously, though, I think there’s a better way of viewing balance, one that’s less rooted in how much time you’re spending on areas of your life and one that’s more rooted in both how much fulfillment you’re extracting from life as well as how much you’re contributing.

And that’s a big shift, because it pulls away from the domesticated view that balance means having it all and turns it more towards being and doing things that are more meaningful.  And frankly, that’s a hell of a lot less stressful.  It takes all the “You have to impress everyone around you” out of the equation.  Which is hard as hell for an extrovert like me who depended on success as a survival mechanism for my formative years, but I’m working on it.

The Point Of It All: Question Your Goals

This hasn’t been a very how-to post because I’m talking more about something I’m working through internally here - the idea that maybe some of my goals (or many of them, honestly) don’t really support what I want out of life.  They just support what I think I want out of life, because that’s what I was taught would make me happy.  But more and more I find that happiness comes from breaking away from the stay-in-school-get-a-good-job-look-good-to-others tips I grew up hearing.

I don’t want to be another “good dog.”  Thankfully, in most senses I’m not, but when it comes to some of the more personal issues I realize that I’ve let my goals be pushed on me by the expectations of society rather than what I really, really want and need.  And I’m sharing this because I’ve learned over the last 3 decades that we’re more alike than different and if you’re feeling something specific, odds are a lot of people are feeling it too.

So that’s today’s stress-reliever for you.  Look at the work-life balance “rules” you set up, the goals that are causing you stress, and ask yourself if those are really the goals that will make you happy.  Ask yourself if you really need to achieve X, and Y, and Z … or do you just think that will make you happy?  Ask yourself how those goals might change if you didn’t worry what other people thought about you.  Ask yourself if you might need to let go of some of those goals, and choose ones that fit the real you better.   (If you find it hard to ask these questions, just read Clay Collins for a bit and let him push you out of your comfort zone.)

While challenging your goals may be will be something you feel initial resistance to, in the end it will cut down on your overall stress levels as you connect with what you really want, what will really make you feel fulfilled.  50-foot goals are great, but they’re not always what they are cracked up to be.  To hell with productivity - we all want meaning a whole lot more.

That’s it for now.  More how-to goodness to follow, so subscribe to this blog by email or RSS to stay on top of it all.  And if you haven’t left a comment lately, I’d love to hear your opinion on letting go of the stress that comes with how you define “work-life balance.”

Work-Life Balance 101: The Failproof Way To Make a Breakthrough

Work-life balance (or even life balance in general) is not an easy task to master.  If it were, the life coach industry wouldn’t be flourishing the way it is now - a quick Google search on “life balance” will give you no less than 25 million results.  Clearly, we’re all feeling the strain - and it’s more than likely we’ve all felt the frustration of trying to “get our lives balanced” again and again, only to have it fail to work out as we’d hoped.

That royally sucks. And frankly, it’s unacceptable.  We deserve better than to live reactive lives, hoping things will get better but feeling in our gut like they never will.  So let’s start putting an end to the cycle.

How To Overcome A Lack Of Balance (Or Just About Anything Else)

The truth is, we only get better at things we spend a bunch of time on. That’s really all there is to it.  If you just approach things on a hit-or-miss basis, you’re going to get results that, well, suck.  But if you work on it every day - and you pay attention - you begin to do something magical.  You begin to become aware of things.  Sometimes happily aware (as in “wow, I never noticed that before”), sometimes painfully aware (as in “oh, shit.”).  But the bottom line is that you become aware.

And when you’re aware, you have the knowledge you need to change things.  It’s like learning a skill such as archery.  If you fire one arrow a week, you’re going to say to yourself, “Damn, I can’t hit that bulls-eye at all.”  If you fire seven arrows in a row, you’re going to notice, “Damn, I’m veering to the left.”  Now you have something to work with.

The secret, magic formula isn’t secret or magic at all.  It’s ridiculously simple.

Do something - anything.

Keep tabs on the results.

Adjust what you’re doing as necessary and go back to step 2.

The problem is, most people do this:

Do something - anything.

Keep ta– oh crap I forgot I have to do this and that and there’s another 5 emails and now the phone is ringing and this person is yelling at me and I’m late with this other thing and man, where did the day go I’m wiped

Feel like crap, and wonder why you can’t get it right.

You see where I’m going with this.  The way to overcome a lack of work life balance is to make the time every day/other day/three days/week/whatever to regroup, refine your strategy, and try again.  That’s how you improve.

Life Is Going To Explode On You, Messily And Without Mercy

Balance isn’t something you can get by winging it, unless you have a very slow-paced life to begin with.  No matter what you have for your goals, life throws urgencies your way.  No way to avoid it.  The way to survive that is to create an island of time where you can shut away the world and focus on what you can do today to get your life more balanced, and how yesterday’s strategy panned out.

Most people do the “Ready, fire, fire” thing.  This is the “aim” part that nobody wants to do because they feel so overwhelmed by the need to fire. Back up.  Remind yourself that getting even a tiny bit of extra power in your life gives you a base to build on.  You’ve probably heard of the debt snowball (or even the “income snowball“) - this is the balance snowball.  No matter how busy you feel, you can find 15 minutes, somewhere, to start making a strategy and working it continuously.

The bottom line is, we lack balance not because we’re too busy, but because we’re not regrouping often enough to handle things actively (rather than reactively).  We’re not asking ourselves “What will it take to make things balance the way I want them to?” every single day.  We’re not taking a hard look at the results we’re getting every day, and we’re not adjusting our strategy accordingly.

My 7 Day Challenge: Make A Daily Appointment In The War Room

Though I’ve got a good handle on time management (hell, I wrote the book on it, so to speak), I have to admit I haven’t mastered the work-life balance thing yet.  Here’s what I’m going to do - and I invite you to do the same.  For the next seven days, I’m going to carve out at least 30 minutes a day (I’ll use the morning, since I wake up early) to assess where I lack balance, how I can start turning the tide, and how my strategy works. I’ll share what I’m learning with you.

I actually have a lot of the tools I need … I just haven’t been using them.  But for the next 7 days, they’re getting used, and my home office will become my “war room.”  Your war room can be anything - an office, your car, even the bathroom (hey, when you have a house full of people, you know that’s the one place you can be alone in).

I welcome your comments, advice and tips - and if you happen to be a life balance coach, drop me a note in the comments below.  I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s to getting started,

Dave

Would The World Stop If You Did?

“Vacation’s all I ever wanted …” - The Go-Gos

You may have noticed a long silence on the blog after a steady stream of posts for the Better Sleep series.   That was on purpose.  You see, I was burning out.  The day job, the blog, other things … I was just at my wit’s end, and I’m not afraid to say it.  During my conversations with other bloggers and entrepreneurs I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one.

We’re all human.  We may look prolific and successful, but it’s just as hard for us to keep juggling all of our responsibilities as it is for anyone else.  (Here’s a tip - everything always looks like it comes easier for other people, but it ain’t so).  So this next series of posts will be about getting a fast paced life more balanced, a step at a time.  But first …

What To Do Before You Crash And Burn

I’ve crashed and burned before.  Wasn’t pretty.  I could sense the day job was taking me that route and I needed to get the hell out of Dodge, as they say, mighty fast.  I took the family to the beach for 3 much needed days and came back a happier man.

But it wasn’t easy.  I had so many projects at work going on, that for weeks I just couldn’t seem to get out from under them.  I was responsible for this thing, and that thing, and the other thing.  I was taking point on so many things that the job was running me rather than the other way around.  So I did the only thing I could - I told my boss that if I didn’t get time off right now, I was going to totally burn out.

Amazingly, The World Did Not End

For the next 3 days, my responsibilities got shifted on to other people.  Meetings were held and decisions that people had been dragging on were finally made, because they had to be.  Others shouldered the workload.  Fortunately, most people were understanding and supportive.  And when I returned, it wasn’t to the chaos I expected.  I had a million emails to catch up on, to be sure, but my projects survived without me.

I think most of us view the world at times with “Armageddon goggles,” where we get caught up in all our responsibilities and think that we can’t take a break or everything will go all to hell.  But it ain’t so.  You can take that vacation you desperately need.  Or you can just take a day off and catch up on some rest and relaxation.  You just have to decide to before you burn out.

Do You Desperately Need A Break?

If you’re like most people, life is moving faster than you want it.  You have to take some time for yourself.  You have to slow down every now and then.  Think of it this way - how many times have you been flat out sick for a day or two, unable to do anything, and yet your business / life / universe managed on without you for that short time?  Relive that moment, except for th deathly ill part.  Take some time to recharge.  If you have no time, make it.  Pretend there’s an emergency that you have to plan around, except this emergency is you need a frickin’ break already.

Easier said than done?  Yes.  As hard as you’ve imagined it to be?  Probably not.

If you’re all mellow at the moment, just subscribe to this blog via email or RSS and keep your eyes out for more good stuff.  But if you’re stressed as hell, than take my advice.  Find a way to get a break - before you break.  You’ll thank yourself for it.