Being more conscious about work-life (balance)

Are you the one who’s on an “always on” grind in your career, only to find out that you’re still not achieving what you want to? Is it that no matter what you do, you are struggling to find quality time for your loved ones. If so, you’re not alone. We all are equally struggling to balance the competing interests in our lives.

Work constitutes a major part of our life in terms of number of hours per day. We probably spend more hours at workplace than anywhere else.

In our adult life, on an average we spend almost 70% of our awake hours at work. That’s a lot by any measure.

So, what can we do?

I know you are reading this article to know solution — not to appreciate my philosophy. But philosophy must be aligned before we consider any solution. I can, sweepingly make this remark that work-life balance is an issue that evolved when we as an individual lost control over our own selves. We are now busy blaming our company, the traffic, our family and everything else — but the primary reason for all our mess is the person in the mirror.

Here I present my very own toolkit for you to be saner, focused and conscious about your life, both at work and at home:

1. Be conscious of mortality. The very idea that you are not here forever helps you to be more organized. It helps you to focus on what matters the most. Unfortunately, we’ve been too disconnected with this idea. I am not saying that we have forgotten that we are mortal. But yes, we are not conscious of it anymore.
2. Know what matters. I do this exercise in my visioning program. I ask participants to list down 4–5 most important things in their lives. Those are things that matters to them the most. I then ask them to analyze how much time in any given day they spend on those important things. The results are expected and scary. There is hardly any coherence. This is where we just go wrong. Life is enough when focused around right things.
3. Be clear. Identify what really matters to you and which benchmarks really signify achievement toward your goals. Communicate so that everyone around you understands these priorities and work with you to make sure these needs get met. If you make this a reciprocal process, you will respect the boundaries of others and help them meet their priorities, too.
4. Don’t multitask — simply get involved. Effective and successful people doesn’t have less to do. But they surely decide on few things to focus. This is a powerful insight. Don’t try to do many things at once. Choose to do only tasks that merit your full attention [priorities demand pure attention], and then execute them with the focus they deserve. This goes for your personal time just as much as for your work time.
5. The final formula. The formula is what you make it. I cannot tell you exactly how many hours to work and how many hours to play, or spend with your family. It’s a personal decision. It depends on what you value the most.

Driving fast in the wrong direction is more costly and painful than crawling slow in the right direction. The problem is when thrill of driving fast keeps us engaged instead of pursuing the purpose. Living a wholesome life demands conscious choices.

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Stay blessed. Stay balanced!