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Balancing Work and Work
How’s your balance these days?
I’m not talking about the balance between work and life. There are enough people covering the subject of working too hard and compromising your personal life. They’re right, too.
But they also don’t discuss balance within each of these areas. They talk about work/life balance, but not balancing work within work or life within life. They treat work and life as two half-circles that form a whole.
You can’t form a whole if one of the half-circles is broken.
I learned that recently – or maybe I always knew it and just forgot. “People miss you, James.” My friend said the words as gently as she could, but she also made them clear and direct so that I would get the point. “You give the impression that you’ve become too busy for them.”
I felt guilty.
She wasn’t quite done yet with me, either. “You’ve gone from being happy boys who showed up everywhere to comment, really thoughtfully, to becoming extremely… selective.”
Alright. Point made, and I knew in my deepest heart that my friend was dead-on right. My instinctive reaction? “I’ve been busy.” Her answer, “Yes, yes, I know.”
And the few days that followed had me thinking an awful lot about how the balance of my work life has skewed. I also see the same situation happening to others, which makes it worthwhile enough for a blog post.
We tend to focus on what’s important to us at the time. Need money? You focus on making money. Need to finish a project? You focus on that project.
That means that other areas take a hit. While you’re writing hard to make money, your marketing suffers. While you’re working to finish that project, the ebook you were developing gets set aside.
And then it becomes easy to forget what mattered most in the first place.
Some time later, when the work is done and the money is coming in again, you come up for air. “Whew! Thank god that’s over!” Yes indeed – but now you have to pick up the pieces where you left off.
The Cost of Focus
Every choice we make comes at a cost. We choose to do something, but that means we’re also choosing not to do something else.
If you set aside that ebook, the cost may be your interest in its completion when you come back to it. You might have forgotten some points you wanted to cover. Maybe the ebook doesn’t even seem like such a good idea anymore.
If you stopped marketing, the cost is clients. Now you have to find them and spend extra time trying to get customers to your door. You probably also aren’t working while you’re doing that, so you take an income hit, too.
That’s why balance in business is important. Your focus needs to touch on all areas that need attention and in proper proportions to make sure everything runs smoothly. Spend too much time on one area, and the other suffers.
Revisiting the Past
The wake-up call my friend gave me was long overdue, and it gave me pause. I sat back and thought for a long while about what I believed in, where my values lay, what parts of the business I loved and what was important to me.
I thought about balance, and how I’d skewed it in the area of work. I’d put all my energy into a project and forgot there was a cost: interaction with people.
People are a big part of why I love what I do, and why we maintain a blog. People fuel my day, keeping me company and discussing in emails. People share conversation with me while I have my morning coffee.
No people? James is one unhappy puppy.
Now I’m returning balance to where it should be, and I’m very thankful that I have friends and readers who were patient enough to stick around until I found my way back to what matters most.
Will I get busy again and need to make choices on where I have to focus? Sure. There are certainly going to be days where I can’t be as present as others, and there are going to be times when I need to put all my energy here or there.
But I’ll be much more careful maintaining balance and distributing my focus across what really matters, like people, communication, interaction and conversation. Putting all my energy into one place isn’t healthy.
Now I’m curious about your experiences. Pick one area, work or life. Have you ever skewed the balance within that single area? What were the consequences? Did you need to correct the situation? Was it tough?
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Social Hookups
*wonders if he truly believes that…*
Think we could all use one on occasion….my daughter and boyfriend are very good at texting me mine…and they are usually sitting in the same room!! But I suppose thats better then getting up to do so LOL
Wow, I arrived way late to the party on this one…
I’m feeling that work/work balance issue right now and what’s suffering is the development side. While I work to market, the product development isn’t happening, which delays the launch of things, which kind of gives less impact to my marketing efforts.
Oh, if only I didn’t have to go out and make money while building up this business. Anyone feel like being a patron to a Someday Mentor?
Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome´s last blog post…Do You Know How Happy You Are?
Alex – Stay tuned for Friday’s post. You may just find what you’re looking for.
@James. Please. You do too have an accent. *swipes the hat and ketchup*
@Kelly: Trust me, the accent is there. I told him he had one the very first time we talked on the phone.
@Deb: re PostIts
She’d say they work, but I have reservations..
I go to the other extreme: I refuse to write anything down. No notes, no crib sheets – I rely on my memory. It’s not perfect, but it does work better than notes – for me. YMMV.
@James: I knew you were lying. Thanks, Harry.
Tony Lawrence´s last blog post…Fifty is nifty but twenty is plenty by Anthony Lawrence
I’m sure it’s a handsome accent, to match his lovely elbow.
Hehehe, my hat is safe. Thanks, Harry.
Kelly´s last blog post…Inspiration Points: Hang In There!
@Tony & Kelly: Just doin’ my job
Boy, good thoughts, James, and right on. Annoying, though, that not only do I need to worry about work-life balance, but work-work balance!
I went through a sort of similar thing last week…realized I had dropped way off in communicating on my chosen range of communities, sites, blogs, etc. Thought about it…figured out that it wasn’t about “busy” — I’m always busy, and still have had time to stay present with my peeps. No, it was about mood. I was going through a really tough time mindwise — series of Murphy-related issues had come crashing down en masse — was feeling out of control of things, whiny, insufficient, and so on. Couldn’t contextualize it all in an upbeat, so I chose to not say anything at all.
Should I have pushed to communicate? Perhaps…in making myself sit down and talk, I probably would have risen to the occasion and either ignored what was going on with (to put my attention on the others I’m conversing with), or naturally found the humor and the pony in the pile of shit sitting in my living room, and written about it.
I’ll try that next time the mood intervenes with my participation….
Thanks for the thought food,
Trish
Trish,
I sympathize with how unanticipated workload can interfere with mood which can interfere with productivity and communication. It seems that work-work balance is really a whole bunch of little circles of balance that overlap to compensate for the chanigng big picture. Communication balance, marketing balance, development balance, etc. It would be interesting to see how each of us realigns our “Work Balance Scale” when things get out of whack. Anyone willing to share?
Emma
Emma´s last blog post…Give Thanks to a Blogger
@ Emma – I agree. It’s all little circles within a whole. When I find myself out of whack and once circle is bigger than the other, then I try to distribute my efforts more evenly so that all circles are of the same size again. At first it feels like work, and then a few days later, I think, “Ahhhh… that feels right.”
@ Trish – Murphy’s Law:
Me: “Today, I will be a rock star. Watch me go.”
Murphy: “Yeah? Well, watch THIS, suckah!!”
There’s been times, I had to cancel plans with friends and family because I had to work on a project. It hurts because I do want to have fun and enjoy myself but my assignment has to be completed. Once in a while I’m happy I am working so I don’t have to show up for some engagements that I don’t want to be involved with. My goal is to spend more time with family and friends. I have to make it work and I don’t want to be single for the rest of my life. Just working and not having fun isn’t a good thing. Just recently I was working so much I had to take a break. I went to two parties and enjoyed myself. It felt good. James, thanks for the article.
Carving out time for yourself on a weekly basis is very important…whats that old saying….all work and no play? But seriously, make it a point to take at least a couple hours off a week just for you….schedule it into your calendar if you have to…but do it! Life is not all about work…….
@ Omar and Deb – Finding time, and often making time even when we feel we don’t have any, are the best gifts we can give ourselves.
And man! Can we ever get a lot done when we’re happy!
This is so true, James. I’ve fallen victim to the same thing in the last few months and have been so focused on work that I have sort of dropped out of site. Apart from the cost to me in terms of loss of personal interactions with other writers, there’s a potential business cost as well. My goal for next year is more balance – love the new design, by the way.
Sharon Hurley Hall´s last blog post…What To Do When You Have Said It All
@ Sharon – Hey!! Welcome back, and yeah, your absence was noted – you were missed!
I also see why, too: “… so focused on work that I dropped out of site.” Yep. Those websites can eat us up and spit us out, eh?
Want to know something funny? Recently, I find myself using “write” instead of “right.” Freudian slip?
Oops – didn’t even notice that, but it works too – my blog has been sorely neglected in the past two months. I do the write/right thing sometimes too. I’m getting back to a more balanced existence, so I hope to be more present from January.
Sharon Hurley Hall´s last blog post…What To Do When You Have Said It All