Work, work and more work! Where’s the fun and all the promised fruits of my sweat equity!? How can I find my happy place, work-life balance and that inner peace? Everything feels so fast and its hard to keep up with it all!
All great questions and observations as this is our current reality for many. How can we bring more of work-life balance into our lives or Is it even possible in this day and age?
Hot topic for sure so let’s dive a little deeper, shall we?
Starting point
First things first, we need to define what work means to us? What are we working for and more importantly WHY?
For many of us these answers are obvious on the surface. Things like financial security, having food on the table and to keep the lights on at the house surely comes first in mind.
In the end of the day, these are the basic necessities that we all need to fill from our work. In the long run though, we need more fulfilling and meaningful work. Something that makes us feel that we are contributing to a bigger cause or making a great impact.
If we have lost our sight of the deeper why, it often leads to a thought that we are missing this thing called work-life balance. You can also review my writing about “From passion to patterns” here.
We are also missing the time to do what we truly want and end up chasing our tale.
The very first step in this equation on searching any kind of meaning to madness is to find clarity. We need to become crystal clear on our true needs and wants and the reasons we do what we do!?
Personally, I get out of bed knowing that I have a possibility to positively impact lives of other people and empower them towards growth while growing myself in the process!
Money, internally measured acts as a weak “WHY” and does not lead to long-term fulfillment or joy.
Once we become clear on the meaning of it all, it’s a lot easier to move forward on our work-life quest.
The challenge
The big variable is what kind of work we do and how fulfilling it is for us.
Entrepreneurs and people that own their own business know very well that the whole idea of work-life balance can be thrown into the rubbish bin. Especially for the first few years, it’s practically impossible to have what many call balance between your work and private life.
With the increasingly changing landscape of work today, even thinking about sustaining balance consistently for long periods of time becomes a joke!
Work-life Integration
A simple idea, a mindset shift of going from balance to integration offers an interesting idea here. Instead of treating work and life as two separate elements of your life, how about integrating both firmly t-ogether!
By listening this podcast you’ll find more insights for this idea of work-life Integration. Joshua B. Lee unpacks the idea that Balance is BULLSH*T: How to Successfully Integrate Work & Life.
Most of us work 8 hours or more per weekday, sleep around 7-8 hours per night and must juggle many other necessities during the day. From a pure physical and mathematical standpoint this so called “balance” is practically impossible!
In 24hours, we just can not have equal amount of time, energy or space for everything we want to accomplish at work and private life.
People who are working for a company might feel different about this idea though. You get to go home, often at least trying to leave the work behind to fully concentrate on private or family life.
Again, become clear on what are your true needs and wants which will help you to find more meaning. Then understand that balance is practically impossible to achieve for long-term. We often have glimpse of calmness just to realize that soon enough the pendulum swings again.
To me, balance is a lack of movement. Integrating work and private life together offers more complete and holistic approach than the separation of the two!
Set Priorities
In all cases, being entrepreneur, company leader or part of the workforce; setting priorities becomes crucial when looking for a work-life integration. We must be able to find space for those activities that truly feed our soul and deeper desires in life.
A very user-friendly action is to plan your week ahead on Sunday. Schedule your private activities into the calendar first! Make them so called non-negotiables so that no matter what happens you will execute on those activities.
A personal example of this is our Wednesday evening sunset time. I will make sure that every Wednesday I’m on the beach with my dog watching the sunset.
Defining for yourself what are your priorities helps to achieve them. Put them into your calendar and make a commitment to someone else to be there too. It will boost your chances to follow through.
The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) did a study on accountability and found that you increase your chances by 65% on completing a goal if you commit to someone. And if you have a specific accountability appointment with a person you’ve committed, you will increase your chance of success by up to 95%.
Build a frame
Now here’s the kicker, our beautiful brain loves patterns! The best way to succeed is to feed our mind on what it asks. Building a system, methodology or a frame to support your life is absolutely essential!
It takes away the guess work as it actually adds freedom! With structure, the mind gets something to chew on and so frees up space for example for creativity.
Most people are afraid of the word system, especially when it comes to your private life. We want to stay in the flow, not thinking too much on our spare time. To me, that’s exactly where the problem lies!
The so-called FLOW states are now scientifically proven to be highly structured states where our brain feeds on goal-oriented activities with an immediate feedback. Flow states are as far away as possible from what many think “being in the flow” means. Here is a quick 4min video by Steven Kotler about Flow states.
Having a structure and a plan for your private life will add clarity! This will then act as a positive feedback loop with your work-related activities.
Clarity of our priorities will get us going, understanding the integration vs. balance will add fuel into the fire and finally building structure opens our life to freedom.
Good or great? =)
