Category: General

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Balance

Why I Hate the “Work-Life Balance” Expression

I am usually a calm and collected individual. I don’t get worked up that easily. But whenever I hear silly expressions like “work-life balance” I can get worked up to unhealthy levels!

It might not seem that obvious why I have a skeleton – not just a bone! – to pick with this expression, but once you realize the grave offense we’re taking so lightly in using this expression, you will join me in hating it as well.

But Hate Is Such A Strong Word

Not really…

In fact, you can look “hate” up in a thesaurus and use all the synonyms you find combined! That’s how I feel about this dumb expression. And what gets me worked up even more is when I start using it myself!

That’s when I feel the sudden urge to chew a bar of soap.

Why The “Work-Life Balance” Expression Deserves to Be Hated

When you try to balance two things, it means that they are either different or opposites of each other. You can balance the time you spend reading with the time you spend writing. You can balance the time you spend with family and the time you spend with your friends. You can balance the time you spend between two (or more) projects.

What you can’t do is balance something with itself or its subcategory!

Did that sentence make any sense?

Of course! If it made you raise three eye-brows (OK, that doesn’t make much sense), it means you have been fooled by this deceptive “work-life balance” expression!

Put simply, work is a part of your life. You shouldn’t treat it as something separate from life.

It’s like saying: “I really have to balance my health and my nutrition. I don’t want my nutrition to get in the way of my health!”

Sounds silly? You bet!

But that’s exactly what we’re saying whenever we try to balance work and life.

The fact is, it’s not work and life that we should be balancing. Work is a part of life. We can balance recreational time with work, but we can’t balance between work and life.

This may seem like a slight, silly mistake in the expression, but if you consider the impression of work (and life) it reinforces,  you will realize how serious this “mistake” really is!

Our View of Work and Life

When we don’t consider work to be an essential part of our lives, we see it as a joyless chore we have to get done. It’s a necessary evil that we try to tame so we can get a chance to live.

But does work have to be this way?

The more we talk about balancing work and life, the more we ingrain this idea in our heads and the more we exclude the thought (and, therefore, the possibility) of finding and experiencing work that we truly enjoy and find enriching.

If we consider life to be anything except work, then we will dread any productive pursuit, because we will label it as “work” instead of an activity that we can enjoy and a means of expressing our creativity and refining our skills (which is what work should be).

If you feel that work is dragging you away from what you enjoy doing, then you know the thought-seed behind such feelings: the idea that work is separate from life. And you can have the “work-life balance” expression to thank for robbing you of the joy you can experience at work!

In the Personal Growth Map, I consider work to be one of 7 Life Areas that make up our lives. We need to give each life area our attention, and be able to advance in all life areas in order to lead a balanced, fulfilling life.

Categories
Personal Growth

The Loaded Carriage Analogy

One of the main reasons why we don’t make the progress we can make in life is that we expect to acquire all the knowledge and skills possible in any endeavour before we make a move.

Rather than start a business, or a business venture, we want to learn everything there is to learn about the economy, finance, business, marketing, advertising, etc, etc.

etc.

Before we make any changes to what we eat, in order to improve our health, we feel the need to read up on nutrition, proper exercise, supplements, etc.

We want to know how to write the best articles possible before publishing anything that can be seen by a set of eyes other than our own. After all, we don’t want to expose our weaknesses or make any mistakes, and in order to be successful, we need to be known for being the best.

At least, that’s what we say to ourselves.

This approach is like going on a journey and trying to load everything we can possibly need or might find a use for onto our carriage before making a move. We go to great lengths to find the resources we need before we venture out, and continue to pile our belongings for fear that we might leave unprepared.

After finally deciding that we are ready enough to make a move we realize that the carriage is too heavy to pull!

We end up staying where we started, without making any progress and without making any use of the resources we amassed.

If you’ve been collecting books to read about business before getting your feet wet in a business, or trying to perfect a skill – such as writing – before putting it to practical use, then you need to bear this analogy in mind.

Having a loaded carriage isn’t a virtue. It’s what’s holding you back.

You might make much more progress with a backpack than with all the resources you will find on that burdened carriage.

Loading Up a Moving Carriage

Rather than collecting resources before making a move, you can load your carriage along the way.

This helps you determine exactly what you need (and not to burden yourself with heavy resources for hypothetical needs), you will be making progress as soon as possible (and with the little resources you might have now), it exposes you to opportunities you wouldn’t have been exposed to had you remained where you started and you would have developed momentum that allows you to make progress without much effort.

The sole need for the resources we collect is using them for the journey. Therefore, it’s important to focus on the journey and not the resources.

By loading a moving carriage, you will develop the appropriate focus and make the appropriate use of your resources!

Categories
Balance

A Little Secret About Leading a Balanced Life

Leading a balanced life is often considered the light at the end of the tunnel. We want to be productive and make enough money to spend more time with our loved ones and to pursue our personal hobbies and interests.

But I’ve discovered a little secret about having a balanced life, based on personal experience and Dr Neil Fiore’s highly recommended book: The Now Habit.

The secret might seem absurd to some, but on closer examination, and by putting this little secret into practice, you will realize how true it is.

The Little Secret

Being productive won’t lead to a balanced life, but a balanced life will boost your productivity!

Sounds strange?

Then let me explain, with an example from my own life, which I am sure you have experienced before.

The Balanced Life and Me

I am usually involved in several projects at any one time. Some projects I find more interesting than others, but I always feel obliged to do the less interesting projects, either due to work commitments or because they are urgent. Therefore, I end up putting my interesting projects on hold until I can get the not-so-interesting projects out of the way.

What about family time? I tend to minimize that time as I get too busy doing professional work, and I usually promise my wife that when I’m done with all my professional commitments I will be able to spend more time with her and the kids.

But the problem is that when I commit the entire day to professional work I’m not usually very productive. In fact, the entire day can slip by without me accomplishing anything!

I end up wondering where the time went and how come I didn’t make the most use of it. And the reasons are very simple.

Reasons Why an Unbalanced Life is Less Productive

Recreational time and pursuing our hobbies isn’t a luxury, but a necessity. We need some time off from intensive work so that we can recharge our energies, regain our focus and revive our passions.

When we put everything we enjoy on hold, life will seem bleak and we will resist the work we “need” to get done as we lament over not having the chance to do the activities we want to do. This is one of the reasons why we check our emails, surf the ‘Net, alternate between different tasks and many other procrastination techniques: we try to experience some form of relaxation while doing our work, but we end up feeling more stressed because we aren’t doing our work and feel guilty about everything else we do!

Besides, is checking emails every 3 minutes as interesting and energizing as going for a swim, or having a family picnic, or meeting up with friends?

By dedicating all our living hours to work, we won’t have the focus necessary to get the results we want. We need to make time for all other areas of our life so that life becomes enjoyable and we aren’t depriving ourselves of an essential part of our lives.

Dr Fiore’s Un-Schedule

One of the tips given by Dr Fiore in The Now Habit is using an Un-Schedule. An Un-Schedule is a schedule that isn’t filled by all your work commitments but, instead, by all the recreational activities you want to do! Instead of trying to make time for recreational activities around work commitments (which you will find hard to do), the Un-Schedule forces you to place your fun activities as a commitment on your schedule and to do your work around your fun commitments.

This way, you have a more realistic vision of the actual time you have to get your work done and it forces you to be focused while doing your work, without allowing your work hours to stretch beyond their necessary limits.

Having a balanced life is a great way to be productive, and you need to keep reminding yourself of this little secret.

For more information on the psychology behind procrastination and great tips on how to lead a balanced and productive life, check out The Now Habit!

Categories
Personal Growth

Your Personal Growth Reference Card

Personal growth literature is full of tips and exercises on how to achieve the results we want in different areas of our lives. But it’s absolutely impossible to put all the advice we come across into practice and definitely not at the same time!

We need to decide what we want to put into practice and leave everything else for a later time. Possibly when we’ve developed what we have currently taken on into habits, or if we find that the exercises we want to practice don’t suit us.

This is where your Personal Growth Reference Card comes in handy.

The Purpose of a Reference Card

The idea behind a Reference Card is quite simple. You want a single point of reference on what you have committed yourself to doing that you can check on a regular basis (to ensure that you don’t forget what advice you wish to follow).

Knowing that your favorite blog has a great post on how to overcome procrastination won’t do you any good, especially when the post will soon make its way into the blog archives, with more and more useful posts making their way to the blog. You will soon forget that great post, and all the posts that came before it and after it as you continue to wonder what you will put into practice and why you aren’t getting the results you want from what you read!

A Reference Card helps you focus on a set of manageable exercises and resources that you will make use of for the time being. Everything else will have to wait unless there are things that can be incorporated into your Reference Card.

Principles of a Reference Card

To get the most out of your Reference Card, fill it in with these principles in mind:

– Categorize the tips into different areas (health, work, family, etc.) and try to have a set of tips that span the most areas you can (to develop a more balanced life)

– Mention the schedule or time in which an exercise is to be practiced (if it is time specific). For example, if you want to drink 8 glasses of water in the morning, you have to include the time you want to drink the glasses, or simply note: First thing in the morning

– Be specific on how the advice is to be put into practice. “Be focused while working” isn’t very practical. “Close all program windows except for the task you are working on” is more practical

– List the resources/tools you want to use. Dumbbells for exercising, a speed-typing software, a set of DVD’s you want to go through, etc

– Be realistic. Don’t put too many routines that are time intensive and which won’t even fit into your schedule!

A Peek at My Reference Card

To give you a sense of what a Personal Growth Reference Card looks like, I’ll share with you some snippets of what I have on my Reference Card:

Health

– Decide what to eat and how much to eat before starting to eat

– Eat slowly. Put the spoon/fork down while chewing

– Don’t drink juices/soft drinks

– Go to the gym before work. Burn at least 600 calories (cross trainer and rowing machine)

Waking Up Early

– Wake up as soon as the alarm rings (snoozing is evil!). Sit up as soon as the alarm rings

– Meditate in bed before going to sleep. Close eyes. Think of how I feel about waking up in the morning. Imagine waking up early full of energy and looking forward to going to the gym

Work Habits

– Write a to-do list of the 3 most important tasks to do early in the morning and ensure they are done before moving on to other tasks

– Close all browser tabs that aren’t related to the task I’m carrying out

Punctuality

– Add a 30 minute buffer for every appointment I need to get to

Starting Your Own Reference Card

Think of the most important habits you wish to develop in the different areas of your life and note them down with a practical description of how you will apply them.

Focus on the habits that make their way into your Reference Card and ignore all other advice (for the time being).

Monitor the progress you make with the habits you have in your Reference Card. If you aren’t feeling comfortable with some habits, replace them with others intended to achieve the same result (e.g. a productivity habit with another productivity habit).

You will notice that this simple tool will help you gain enormous focus on how to advance your life in different areas without feeling overwhelmed with all the exercises you can practice!

Categories
Personal Growth

Take Your Own Advice

Personal growth enthusiasts are on a desperate search for tips, tricks and advice to help improve their lives. They read the books, listen to the audio programs, attend the seminars, participate in the workshops and do just about anything to find the right advice to help them grow.

But there is an extremely useful resource that we often neglect. While our eyes are busy scanning our environment for resources we can use, we neglect our most precious resource: our own knowledge.

Since we’re experiencing the problems, we figure that the solution has to come from the outside. We need other people’s help. We need to gain more knowledge. After all, the knowledge we already have isn’t helping us overcome our problems!

That’s because we can play two roles: the person giving advice and the person in need of advice. By recognizing the role and immense knowledge of our “Adviser Self” we can solve most of our problems without searching for answers in distant lands.

Meet Your “Adviser Self”

Has a friend ever came to you for help in overcoming a problem that you suffered from as well, but were able to give him the most eloquent and helpful advice to solve his problem, yet you weren’t following the advice yourself?!

That’s your Adviser Self speaking. The Adviser Self is very knowledgeable and clear headed. He tackles problems objectively and the solutions are apparent to him. When others seek his counsel, he can remain level-headed, calm and collected. He is willing to listen to the problem without being judgmental. He is able to ask sensible questions to better understand the problem and the situation in which it arose.

He focuses on finding solutions. He is able to make use of his past experiences and all the resources he has come across in the past to present the most beneficial advice he can come up with. And in most cases, his advice is effective in dealing with other people’s problems.

But when it comes to dealing with our own problems, the Adviser Self seems neglected. His voice is drowned in the noise of chaotic emotions, desperate rationalizations and defensive blockades that shun him away to the point where his existence is doubted!

We associate ourselves with our problems and not with our knowledge.

We see ourselves in need of help and not as the helpers.

The problem isn’t that we lack the knowledge but that we don’t even realize that we possess the knowledge in the first place!

This is when our most precious resource begins digging his own grave as we continue our struggle seeking other people’s help.

Listen to Your Adviser Self

Look at a single area of your life where you feel there is a great deal of room for improvement. Let’s take productivity as an example. Suppose your days pass by without you accomplishing anything. The default response would be: “Why am I such a lazy *bleep* *bleep*? I’m so useless! I need to read more about productivity! I need to find a productivity system to help me get things done! I NEED HELP!!!!”

This is what happens when you side with your Helpless Self. Your Helpless Self assumes that you are incapable of doing anything or figuring anything out by yourself. Therefore, it places its trust in other people’s advice while neglecting the Adviser Self.

Now, let’s try to pay attention to what the Adviser Self has to say. Rather than see the productivity problem as your own, assume a friend is asking you for advice. He has the productivity problem and not you. He wants to know what you have to say to solve his problem.

In this case, the most likely reaction is that you won’t side with your Helpless Self. Your Adviser Self will come to the rescue!

Write down all the observations, questions, answers, suggestions, comforting words and whatever else your Adviser Self has to say.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You won’t be too productive if you feel crappy about yourself. Don’t keep checking your email account every 3 minutes. Write a to-do list of the things you want to get done today. But be realistic about what you can accomplish…”

You will notice advice flowing that you may have not heard before!

And what’s special about your Adviser Self is that he knows you… very intimately! He can give you relevant advice that deals with the exact problems you are facing. But as long as you can project your Helpless Self and his problems onto someone else (a friend in need of your help), you can start listening to what your Adviser Self has to say.

An Exercise

Pick an area of your life you want to improve. Consider the problems you are experiencing in that area as problems your friend is trying to overcome.

Ask your “friend” the following questions (or any sequence of questions your Adviser Self comes up with) and write down the answers:

“What seems to be the problem?”

“How do you feel about it?”

“What do you think is causing this problem?”

“What do you think you can do about this problem?”

These are questions your Helpless Self will answer with the counsel of your Adviser Self.

Now, consider what your Adviser Self has to say about the answers. What advice can he give? How does he see your Helpless Self’s situation? What has he read that your Helpless Self can make use of?

Once you have presented your “friend” with the advice he needs, ask your “friend” this question:

“What will you do to put my advice into practice?”

Write that down as your stepping stone towards overcoming your Helpless Self’s problem. You now have a solution that didn’t need any reading for you to find. 🙂

Share your self-dialogue in the comments section below!