Of course, we know better (now), and we’re calling bullshit on this.  Running at maximum capacity does NOT equal a better life any more than redlining your car’s engine makes it last longer.  “Zoom zoom,” indeed.

So let’s talk about one of the many tools the Cult of Productivity – The Default “Yes.”

Just Say No (Where Have We Heard This Before)?

Somewhere along the line we’ve made the false connection between being busy and being cool.  It became a little high-schoolesque game to see who had the most gadgets, the most projects, the most emails on a daily basis.  Productivity became, in a sense, a pissing contest.

The more stressed for time you were, the more you had “arrived.”  The more you could impress people with being everywhere at once.  The more things you could jam on your personal and professional resume.

The problem with this is, when you spread yourself out like that, you’re spreading yourself thin.  Your circle of influence may have stretched to miles wide, but eventually it’s only a quarter-inch deep.  Not a good place to be.

But – gasp – you can’t slow down … that would be admitting weakness. That would betray a lack of “real” priorities.  And so when a new project, a new idea, a new commitment of time and energy comes by … how can you say no?

After all, it’s a really cool project.  And it’ll be a great networking opportunity. And I’m sure I could squeeze it in.

And then you end up like those trains in Japan, where they literally have to have a “spotter” to help push people into the train because they are packed so tightly.

Because saying “no” to a new commitment becomes equivalent to failure.

And we all know how unacceptable failure is in our society.  It’s like a non-airbrushed photo of a supermodel – it’s something to be shunned and attacked (eek!  It’s reality – run!!!).

And so time and again, we get tricked into saying “yes,” because we’re afraid of the fallout of “no.”

But if you don’t say no – relentlessly – the Cult captures you.

You know, having certain people view you as a failure isn’t so bad.  After all, if someone is going to be so shallow as to shun you because you aren’t willing to settle for burning your soul out prematurely, then that’s a really cool situation – you can weed out the posers and false friends from your life.

Who knows, you might actually end up left all alone … except for the handful of real people who accept you for who you are and are also willing to be transparent and honest about their own limits.

The horror.

But the Cult is relentless – so you’ve got to be relentless back at them.  You can’t just say “no” every once in a while – you’ve got to make it a default answer in your mind, because the pressures of society will try and force you into taking more an more on until you every last drop of you is squeezed out.

That’s a scary thing for a lot of people – the idea of not taking on and endless array of goals – but it’s a damned important one for your life.  Here’s why.

Saying “No” Means Saying “Yes” To Only The Right, Best Things

When you say “yes” to everything, you’re not making any judgement calls or assessing the value of things.  You’re just taking things on because they’re there, or because you don’t want to disappoint someone.

But this is madness.  It’s like deciding you’ll date anyone who is interested in you rather than looking for someone you like, respect and trust.

And just like sex sells in advertising, the Cult of Productivity wants you to be really easy when it comes to accepting goals.  It’s already loosened you up with the “contact high” of other people’s super-productivity, and it’s hoping you’ll be a sure thing.

But you want to respect yourself in the morning …

… so you’re going to want to be more discerning.  When you decide your default answer is going to be “no,” you’re forcing yourself to really evaluate whether this new commitment of time and energy really lines up with what you want for your life.

You’re going to have to ask yourself if it’s worth trading part of your life for it.  As @CharlieGilkey says: “If it’s not worth doing, doing it will be at the cost of something worth doing.”

So repeat after me: Saying “no” is not a sign of weakness.  It is proof you are not insane.

But it’s easier said than done.

How to push past resistance to “no”

There’s no doubt you’ll encounter a lot of resistance when you first start saying “no” – not only from the Cult of Productivity (who, let it be said, aren’t evil – they just believe you can always do something more) – but also from yourself.

It’s going to be difficult and uncomfortable to turn commitments down, but it will make you a happier person.  It will also have the side effect of making you (dare I say it?) more productive, because you’ll be freeing up more focus to handle the things that are currently on your plate.

And as your plate gets clearer, your mind will get clearer, too.  You’ll start rejecting commitments that add “shallow value” to your life and take on different commitments that feed your sense of self and value and contribution.  You’ll become someone who builds a fullfilling life rather than just a life filled with “one more thing.”

It won’t be easy.  But saying “yes” all the time is even harder, and you know it.  Start the practice of resisting new commitments and only saying “yes” when they truly align with what you want.

But how do you start saying “no” when you’re not good at it?

Next post will talk about how to do this – but in the meantime, if you’ve got a strategy for keeping the number of commitments you juggle sane, feeel free to add it in the comments.

Good luck – and start saying “no” more often -

Dave

I mean it.  As Naomi says, “Cue big-ass red text”:

Belief drives action.

You don’t believe, you don’t act.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.  The question is, when it really comes down to it, do you really even believe you can get your life more balanced?

• Do you believe you’ll ever get ahead of the non-stop pace of life long enough to catch your breath … or do you believe that the insanity of the week will never end?

• Do you believe you can slow down and still get things done, or do you believe you’ll always have to run yourself ragged just to make ends meet?

• Do you believe you’ll ever manage to have more time for yourself?  Your family?  Your “significant other?”  Or do you believe that you’ll just have to take what you can get?

Belief drives action.

You don’t believe, you don’t act.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

So if you believe that your life is just too busy … that you’ve just got too much going on … that you don’t have the time for the people you care about … how much drive are you going to have to change your situation?

Life Doesn’t Change Itself, Bub.

You may want to get your life balanced.  You may even think you have a shot at it.  But if you don’t have certainty that you can start making progress, start getting ahead, then you’re simply not going to take the kind of action that moves your life toward balance.  Instead, you’re going to have one hell of a stress headache every day for the rest of your life, and you’ll sit around wishing things would get better rather than making it better.  I know, I’ve been there.

Facing Your Self-Doubt – And Defusing It

When you feel like you’re behind in everything, you don’t have time for yourself, and nothing seems to help … positive thinking isn’t going to cut it.  You can’t say “Golly, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel!” because you know that light is a freaking train, coming to run over that schedule you had for the day.  SQUISH. Positive thinking isn’t the solution.

When you’re full of stress, anxiety, and the despair of the ever-rushed, no amount of smiling is going to help you defeat that feeling of helplessness and doubt that comes when you realize you’re trading the good things in life for “stuff” – or trading those hours to work, just to get by.  You think of getting ahead, then you stress because you doubt you can do it, then you start thinking of something else, fast.

What will help, though, is facing that doubt instead of wishing it wasn’t there.  Of staring it straight in the eye and coming to terms with it.  Sure, you may feel like you can’t get ahead … that it’s too late to catch up on missed opportunities … that there’s just too much to do to get everything balanced.  Admit it.  Own it.  But then take the next step: defuse it by getting the last word in. Four words, specifically:

“But I can do SOMETHING.”

Sure, you can’t get your life balanced overnight.  Maybe not even in a year.  Maybe there are missed opportunities that won’t come again.  But here’s the deal – if you take a little action – the tiniest damn thing – every day, you’ll start making progress.  Maybe you can spend 15 minutes every Wednesday reading to your kid if you don’t do it at all.  Maybe you can fit in a 5 minute walk each day if you sit on your ass too much (self, I’m talkin’ to you!).  Maybe you can write, or read, or study whatever over one lunch break per week.

The point is, you can do SOMETHING.  And SOMETHING is power.  The power to turn the tide.  Self-doubt comes from feeling helpless to “make it all better.”  But you can make something better this week, and that makes you more powerful.  You can make your life 1/10th of a percent more balanced this week, even if everything is going to hell.  You can do something.  You can’t argue with that.

And if you can do something, then you can crank it up a notch later.  The important thing is that you’re not stagnating, or sliding backwards.  You’re breaking the cycle.  Eventually you will have that breakthrough that lets you get more balanced.

But it all comes down to believing that those small, insignificant actions aren’t insignificant at all. They add a heaping helping of better to your life right now.  Maybe not “enough,” but more than you had before.

Don’t let self-doubt have the last word. You’re an adult, you have the last word.  Even if you feel with every fiber of your being that you’re trapped in a cycle of endless suck, you can do something to make it suck one fraction less.  You’re not helpless.

Every time you feel helpless to get everything balanced, tell yourself “But I can do SOMETHING.”

Belief drives action.

You don’t believe, you don’t act.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

PS – one great action to take right now would be to subscribe to this blog. Or if you’ve already done that, join the Rock Your Day newsletter.  It’s fat free and chock full of awesome.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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

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.

It’s been a gritty, no-hold-barred set of posts on Rock Your Day lately.  I’ve asked you whether you’ll regret where your goals take you, and made you come to terms with the reality that you won’t get a second chance to make up for lost time.  The time to balance your life is now, not some magical time later that you’ve been telling yourself is just around the corner for months/years/ohmygodhasitbeenthatlong.

But the challenge most of us face is that we feel like we’re already too damned busy to get balanced.  What are we supposed to do?  Don’t worry – I’ll give you the goods after the opening act.

Getting Balanced Happens One Step At A Time

The trick to getting balanced is to take the pressure off.  We tend to resist taking action to balance our life because the idea of getting balanced seems overwhelming, like climbing Mt. Everest in one hella-big jump.  Even the phrase “getting balanced” carries the connotation that we’ve arrived, that everything is in order, and fundamentally we know that life just ain’t so.  So why even bother to try conquering the mountain in one jump?

The simple answer is this: don’t try.  Don’t saddle yourself with the tension that comes when you try to set too many goals at once, when you try to mold yourself into the perfect Superman/woman we know no one can never be (yet somehow still tell ourselves is a reasonable goal).  Instead, focus on today.  Right now.  Specifically, a slice of time from 5 to 15 minutes.

You may not have time to balance your life today, but you cannot tell me that you can’t carve out 5 minutes to work on something.  You can try, but you know that you’d just be bull$hitting yourself. I say that from a position of authority, because I’ve been doing it myself, telling myself that I’ll “get around” to a few things I’ve been slacking on but have resisted because I have so much on my plate.  So for a moment I’ll have to stop kicking Brett’s a$$ and start kicking my own again.

15 Minutes = 3 Areas Of Increasing Balance

Here’s an example of what I mean by taking balance one step at a time.  On a physical level, I know I need to get back into yoga (or my sister won’t stop bugging me). On an emotional level, I know I need to get back into focusing on gratitude daily.  And on a spiritual level, I know that I’m not spending the time that I used to looking inward and asking the tough questions.

So here’s what I’m going to do over the next 7 days – I’m going to carve out 5 minutes for each of these things – no damned excuses allowed – everyday for the next week.  Sure, 5 minutes of yoga a day doesn’t sound like much, but think about it – I can develop a mini-routine of a few nice stretches.  5 minutes of journaling what I’m grateful for?  I know that will make a difference.  And 5 minutes of introspection?  It won’t necessarily change my life, but it will make me more conscious of what I’m doing and thinking … and that’s where momentum gets built.

5 minutes seems like too small a slice to be worthwhile, but from experience I know it’s incredibly worthwhile, for two reasons.

• First, it’s like tracking what you spend or what you eat – the very act of awareness begins to change your attitudes and habits automatically.

• Second, once you taste a little bit of balance, you crave more.  You start getting more motivated to find more time, and 5 minutes turns to 10, then 20 … and an upward spiral begins.

It’s easy – so easy that you’ll be tempted to not try it yourself.  But I challenge you not to shrug this off.

Dave’s 7-Day Challenge To You (Don’t Pass It Up!)

I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t try to kick your a$$ a bit too.  You know the 3 things I’ll be spending 5 minutes each on for the next 7 days … what are yours?  Tell me in the comments area below.  Don’t be shy or make excuses – just pick 3 areas of your life that you want to get more balanced and “give a little bit of your time” to it.

You have 15 minutes.  You know you do.  Use it to change your life.  (Oh, and if you haven’t done it, take 15 seconds to subscribe to this blog for more adventures in a$$-kickery)

With the response to Friday’s blog post / music video being so strong, I know I’ve hit a nerve.  I’m not the only one who has struggled with balancing family, relationship and personal goals while building a business.  It’s not easy.  The constant demands of business building and our social conditioning make it far too easy to neglect what’s truly important while we focus on “success” in the professional arena – and we can lose balance.   But it doesn’t have to be.  (More after this heart-wrenching, must watch video.)

The True Cost Of Doing Business

While driving to the store yesterday I had a chance to talk to my oldest son about an economic term called “opportunity cost,” the technical way of referring to the sacrifice you make whenever you spend your time/resources on something.  For example, if you spend 4 hours today redesigning your blog, you sacrifice 4 hours of writing additional posts.  Or, if you spend three hours visiting yard sales (as we were doing at the time), you sacrifice 3 hours you could be having a yard sale.

It’s like the old expression goes, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  Somebody’s got to pay for everything, whether in terms of actual payment (money) or some other sacrifice (resources get allocated elsewhere).  Harry Chapin sings about this in the video above, when noting that “planes to catch / and bills to pay” forced him to pay a high opportunity cost in terms of his son (“He learned to walk while I was away”).

For a freelancer or entrepreneur, the opportunity costs we pay every day can be significant.  The fact that one hour is billable and urgent can easily overshadow a non-billable event (like playing with our kids, spending time with our spouse, or hitting the damn gym already) that we can say we’ll “catch up on later.”  If this has been an emotionally neutral article for you so far, you probably haven’t been paying too high an opportunity cost lately.  But if you’ve been feeling the knife twisting (or avoiding watching the video because it tears you up), then it’s likely you’re paying more than you expected to to build your business.

How To Manage Your Opportunity Costs & Keep Balanced

The tricky thing about opportunity costs is that psychologically we tend to view them as mutually exclusive to one another.  We think that one activity necessarily has to require we sacrifice the other.  We’ll go to the gym when work calms down.  We’ll spruce up our web site when we get more money.  We’ll take that vacation with the family when we get ahead a little.  But when we’re always putting one thing off to have another, we run the risk of losing oportunities that may never come again (such as time with the family or better health right now).

In the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris brings up the concept of “mini-retirements” as a way to enjoy your life right now.  Instead of waiting decades until you can finally retire and relax and travel the world, why not rearrange things so that you can do so in the present, every so often, for a few days at a time.  You’ll get to taste a future goal now and add more enjoyment to your life.  This idea isn’t limited to retirements – you can apply it almost everywhere – and it’s a key factor in creating a balanced life.  I’m calling it the 80/20 Rule of Balance:

Devoting even a small amount of consistent focus to a goal can yield big results.

In other words, you don’t have to wait until you have 100% of the time/resources you think you need to start getting results – you can have them now.  For example, I used to think that once I “made it” and started making a lot more money I’d finally have the flexibility to spend more time with my family.  And so I’d put things off until “later” and leave a void in that area.

But now I realize that he 80/20 rule applies here.  For example, yesterday, our family had an enormous amount of work to do in terms of cleaning up the house / tackling maintenance projects.  The little ones wanted to go to the park, to go for bike rides, to play Lego for hours … but we didn’t have the time.  In the past, I would have said, “there’s too much work to do … if we can get it all done, then we’ll have time to play.”

But yesterday I applied the 80/20 Rule of Balance and did this – every so often throughout the day I’d stop working and spend 15-30 minutes playing with the kids.  It was rushed, I didn’t have the time I thought I needed to really “make it count,” but it didn’t matter.  The kids were very happy.  They didn’t need much – just a little time made a big difference.  And I made some badass Lego spaceships.  Really badass.

Did I get everything done around the house?  No, but I got some stuff done.  Did I spend as much time as I wanted to with the kids?  No, but I spent some time making memories.  I didn’t neglect either priority, and I created more balance because of it.  Emotionally I feel like even though I spent only 10% of the time I wanted to with the kids, I created 50% of the result they wanted. More importantly, I created enough of the result they wanted for them to feel connected.

So that’s your lesson – you don’t have to wait until you can give 100% of your focus to finally tackle another priority area in your life.  Give it some attention now – even if it’s a little bit, and it’s like watering a plant.  It keeps it alive.  And you’ll find that it also creates the hunger inside you to get more disciplined so that you can spend even more time on it later.

I’ll leave you with this thought.  I never got to know my father.  He worked 3 jobs to provide for us and I barely ever saw him, (my family basically fell apart when I was 9).  I feel a sadness and a void that can’t be filled because the window of opportunity has passed.  But I know he loved me, because he tapped into the 80/20 Rule of Balance.

Though I have very, very few memories of him at all, the strongest memory is how every once in a while when I was young (7 or 8), he would wake me up at 3am in between two of his jobs and take me out for ice cream for a half-hour or so.  This tiny sliver of time didn’t close the gap between us, but it let me know I was loved, and it’s a strong memory even decades later. Perhaps if fate had played out differently, the gap may have even closed over time.

The message I want you to take from this – begin closing that balance gap now, not later.  If you have no time to spend with your family, find a way to carve a slice now.  If you have no time to take care of your health, find one small step you can take this week.  Do something now, and get things going.  It doesn’t take much to start getting significant value, so don’t miss this window of opportunity.  It will never come again.

You won’t get a second chance to balance your life.  You have to start right now.  Wake up, and fight for it, and take whatever bit of ground you can today.  You can’t count on the perfect opportunity to start balancing your life – you have to take the present opportunity and squeeze something out of it.

Want to share your thoughts in the comments below or subscribe to this blog? I dig both.