There are thousands of metaphors you can use to illustrate the unending pursuit of balance in life. For instance, it is like chasing an outlaw who is the master of disguise. You think you’ve got him, but you never really know for sure. Or if you like sports, think of it as the goal post being left wide open and all you need to do is kick the ball in and claim what’s rightfully yours – the elusive trophy of Perfect Work Life Balance. As you run up to score, you are informed that the game has changed and so has your goal! You aren’t even playing for the same trophy anymore.
Whatever story you choose to relate to the concept, the facts remain the same. On one side of the world, we hear of a techie losing his life after a marathon 36 hour conference call, while in another continent, the average individual would kill for that kind of a career. There is no real agreement on what the average human wants in life, or what he chases all through it. In the beginning, you wouldn’t have had any real control over how these resources were managed. The choices were all made for you – whom you were born to, what name they called you by, whom you grew up with, which school you went to, and whether you had to work to earn a living. There were people around you who shaped your perspectives and convictions, whether you liked it or not. There is no second chance at growing up anyway. So let us try to fix things here and now.
1. Stop calling it Work-Life Balance
“Work-Life Balance” is highly inappropriate in today’s context, since it implies that “work” is not a part of life and portrays it wrongly as something that diverts your attention from life. Any sort of balance you hope to achieve in life must include “work” in some form or the other and it isn’t always in the most obvious manner. All through life you need to work – to earn a living, to sustain a relationship, to take life forward intelligently, or at least to utilize the resources you have at your disposal. “Life” as a term, as well as a model essentially covers “work” within its scope. So let us just call it Life Balance, and that is exactly what we should be trying to maintain.
2. Be aware of the resources you have at your disposal
We are all born with specific amounts of certain resources– intelligence, energy, knowledge, creativity, money, influence, commanding power, popularity, credibility, respect and time to name a few. The quality and quantity of each depends on when and where the birth occurred, the genetics behind it, the star you were born under and of course, the manner in which you grew up. Everything that happens to you later in life depends on how you manage these resources available to you. Work is only a process in which you spend resources like energy, time and at times money to increase one or more of your resources such as knowledge, skill or strength.
Investing the right amount of resources at the right places, based on your own priorities and objectives, will give you the returns you hope for. Some of them can be exchanged for others, but some of them are cost centers which need continuous investment. For instance, you can spend time to study and gain knowledge. The knowledge you thus gain, along with time, can be exchanged for money – that is what you typically do on your job. Similarly, you can spend time practicing a particular sport, and once you get very good at it, you are admired as a good sportsperson. Once you gather a good fan following, you have the credibility to make people believe what you say. When you use that credibility to sell products as a brand ambassador in return for a fee, you are in fact exchanging credibility for money. Respect and popularity are key enablers for most of the other resources, but they themselves depend on resources like intelligence, knowledge and creativity for sustenance.
3. Recognize your key resource
The most vital resource you have at your disposal is yourself. You are essentially an amalgamation of several of the fundamental resources mentioned above, customized according to the conditions you live, work and spend time in. You are severely limited by time, and can also be only in one place at once in the truest sense. Yet, there is typically an intense demand on you, your time, your attention, your presence, your assistance and your efforts at all times. Intelligent spending of your key resource is a critical part of sustaining the business of life.
4. Monitor how you spend your key resource
Typically, your life is divided between your family, your work, your social life and friends – each in its own way. Think of them as boxes, where you put a little piece of yourself in. None of them can be left empty.
A very important box, which constantly demands a part of your life, is your own self. This box represents the time and other resources which you spend on yourself, either with the people you love or away from them all – whichever makes you feel better at each point of time. What should ideally go into this particular box is often divided amongst the others. But it is critical to give it an independent existence, and not merely as a pool to draw reserves from.
5. Don’t use the clock to measure Life Balance
Achieving balance in life is not about how much time you spend at work, at home or elsewhere. How much time you need to spend at work depends on the kind of job you have. Some jobs need you to spend just a couple of hours a day or less, while others may need much more from you. How much time you need to spend with your family depends on the members in your family. If you are a single parent, you may need to spend more time with your children than if there was someone responsible to take care of them. How much time you get to spend with friends depends on the kind of friends you have and what you do together. If all your friends like to travel a lot, you may want to join them and that could take a lot of time and effort. If your friends meet regularly for sports or card games, you may want to join them in that too. How much time you need to spend for yourself depends on all the other things you spend your time on and how long it would take you to disconnect from it. There is no rule that says all these time intervals have to be equal. Just because you spend the same amount of time in office and home, don’t assume that they are both getting the attention they deserve. If your job demands more time than you can spare, then it may be time to look for another one. If your activities with friends are taking more time than you can spare, then it may be time to cut down a little bit and focus on other things. You want all of them to have an equal piece of yourself or your life – not an equal stretch of time!
6. Confirm your priorities
There is no universally agreeable answer to the question of priorities of an individual. Only you are fully aware of your own priorities, and you can never be fully aware of another person’s priorities no matter how well he/she tries to explain them to you. This is because many of your priorities are decided by the subconscious mind, based on its calculations of investments required and the subsequent payoffs. Your conscious mind may not have a full grasp of this, and that is why explaining it to someone is not so easy. So the first thing you will need to do is to make a list of everything you want to do and get done – irrespective of the order of priority. Give yourself some leeway here and don’t bother too much about the “why” aspect of those priorities. Then, as a next step, you can apply your own logic to figure out which of those should be done first, what next and what last. At this point, feel free to bombard yourself with questions like Why should this be done now? What will happen if I don’t do it? Does this have more consequences for delay than the next one?
The biggest question you need to ask is: Is investment of yourself necessary for this task to be done; or can you have someone else do it with acceptable effectiveness? Saying No to this question in a few cases can make it much easier to manage your primary resource.
7. Accept that there is a risk of retribution
In a perfect world, you would have the answers to every question that comes up and you would be able to happily cross off all items on your tasks list in order. But since we live in a more practical society, there may be times when you need to compromise on your perfect scores and settle for doing as much as you can. Of course, if you worry about having ten big things to do you probably will get nothing done. If you stop worrying and start on at least the little things, then you can cross them off the list and worry about fewer things left to do. But which ones do you do first?
Whichever tasks are most critical to the business (or the organization) deserve to come first on your list, assuming that you still want to be part of the organization for the long term. Next comes those tasks which will affect your personal credibility in case of delay or abandonment. The third and fourth categories depend entirely on the risk of retribution you are willing to take. Some tasks may create problems for you if they are delayed. Put them next on your priority list. Some other tasks are okay to be delayed, as long as you make sure you do them (or get them done). Let them take the last slot.
What happens to the other tasks? Do not abandon them! Just delegate.
8. Visualize the schematic of life
Anyone who has learnt science in one form or the other would be familiar with Schematic Diagrams. Back in engineering college, we used schematic diagrams in place of more complex circuit diagrams, when we were unsure of what components went into each part. In the name of simplifying the illustration, we were able to hide the lack of thoroughness. What will a schematic diagram of life, as we know it, look like?
Think of yourself as a power source, or a generator supplying a finite amount of energy. Your personal life setup and professional setup are two engines that draw power from the source to deliver the critical outputs that you need to sustain life. If both the engines are turned on at the same time, the finite energy you have at your disposal is divided between the two engines and neither of them is able to work to its full potential and deliver to capacity. If you balance the loads, instead, and establish a good time-sharing/switching arrangement, both engines will be more efficient and can deliver the outputs you need.
Analogously, this means that if you try to think about work and personal life at the same time, you end up being unable to concentrate on either of them. If you set aside specific time frames for work and personal/social lives, and diligently stick to it by not bringing work home and not taking personal life to work, then you will be able to devote enough attention to both.
On the other hand, some people decide to avoid one of those engines altogether and try to keep the other one running all the time. True, that particular engine will run at full efficiency (until it is worn out), but you will have to settle for only half of the critical outputs you need to sustain life and do without the other half. Ultimately, this will take a toll on the power source itself, and eventually wear you out.
