Life Hacks: Being too busy is just an excuse
There is no such things as the perfect work-life, says lifestyle coach
LET’S bust one myth from the get-go. There is no such thing as the perfect work-life balance. Technically speaking, a work-life balance refers to the level of prioritisation between personal and professional activities in an individual’s life and striving to obtain the optimum level in which activities related to their job are not present in the home and vice versa. But completely separating both is, in my view, next to impossible.
If your child is sick and you have to go to work it’s inevitable that you bring that worry with you into work. Yes, you must focus on your daily tasks but it’s still on your mind. Just like that big work presentation is preoccupying your thoughts when you are helping your children with their homework. It happens. Life gets in the way sometimes when we are busy planning how our days/ weeks/months should look in the perfect world.
It’s hard for both not to overlap, the key is to not allow yourself to feel guilty when it does. Guilt engulfs us all. Understanding your priorities will ease the guilt and help make decisions easier to make when it comes to achieving some form of balance in your life.
The first step is understanding that everyone’s idea of work-life balance is different. You need to work towards what is right for you. Maybe working on a Saturday morning is a necessity in order for you to be able to have time in the evenings for your children/partner/fitness/self, or maybe working late Monday to Friday means you have your weekends completely free.
However, saying ‘I am too busy to do it’ will not suffice. Being busy is not the reason you cannot do it, instead it’s because you do not hold it as one of your priorities. Being ‘too busy’ is an excuse. You need to be stronger than your excuses if it is important to you. Get up a half-hour earlier to get exercise, prepare your lunch the night before, make that phone call on your lunch break.
We can’t always achieve the optimum balance we want but perhaps a better option is to focus on work-life satisfaction.
Author and corporate trainer Jones Loflin says it’s really about “making the right choice about where our time and energy is needed right now based on our purpose, goals, values, or whatever principles guide us. If we are living our lives in close alignment with our purpose, we are more satisfied with our outcomes. And satisfaction can be measured much more accurately than balance.”
Loflin believes we should explore our own satisfaction levels. To identify what needs to be changed, he suggests finishing this statement: ‘I would be more satisfied with my life if…’
At least you are setting a realistic starting point by doing this.
Only finish the sentence with something you can actively make into a reality.
Saying “I would be more satisfied if I won the Lotto so I could give up work isn’t attainable, as it is not within your control.”
To improve the attainment of balance, we need to regularly ask ourselves honest questions in the important areas of our lives. For example:
Work — ‘What did I do to move a project forward today? If I used my time like I did today for the next month, would my business grow or shrink?’
Self — ‘Did I start my day in such a way that it provided me with the physical, emotional, and mental energy that I need? Am I a better person because of the choices I made today?’
Relationships —‘Did I do my best to encourage everyone that I interacted with today? Did I do my best to help someone in at least one relationship today?’
We often give ourselves a hard time, especially when we are struggling to find balance. Too many people fixate on criticising themselves for what they’re not doing, instead of celebrating what they are doing.
Recently I heard someone suggest that “you should cast your mind back to a time when you wanted everything you have right now”.
That stopped me dead in my tracks. He was right. There was a time when what I wanted was to work for myself, work with different people in the broadcasting world, help people as a performance and lifestyle coach, afford to live in a house with my other half, and be able to pay my bills every month by doing what I love.
When I stopped to reflect, I realised an incredible energy is created within us when we take a moment to think about all the positive things that we have already done or experienced. If anything, it keeps us motivated to keep going.
Stay trucking onwards.
Anna asks
I SPOKE recently with former world champion hurdler turned businesswoman and best-selling author Derval O’Rourke about striving for the perfect work-life balance. It doesn’t exist, she says, adding “you can’t be everything to everyone”.
She offers great advice on working towards progress, not perfection.
- Don’t forget about you. You must give yourself permission to prioritise you. We need to reduce our expectations of ourselves sometimes.
- Working on a new business venture means she is juggling a lot. You need to be honest with yourself and if you can’t do something within the timeframe of a normal working week then you are not being efficient with your time, so you need to revisit it and revise it.
- Decide on your off time. Cap your workload and when you reach your limit, learn to say ‘no’, but in a positive way (see last week’s column for tips on how to say ‘no’). Set yourself strict guidelines when it comes to your phone. Derval doesn’t check emails before 9am or at night.
- You have to make up your own mind about what is right for you. When it comes to taking risks and maintaining balance in life we need to toughen up. We all need to prepare ourselves for rejection, mistakes and negativity. Resilience is a crucial skill so that you can learn to bounce back.
- Stay in the moment. Be ambitious, but also enjoy the rewards that come from your hard work, no matter how small there are.
