Want to Feel Better? Live Life with Numbers

The Simple Awareness of Re-balancing Your Priorities

Do you wake up some days and feel like something is completely out of whack?

You aren't quite sure, but you know that there isn't the balance you need.

Most people think of this as binary, the famous work / life balance. This ends up being unfair because it does two things. First it makes people think in terms of work vs all other. Second, it does not give enough visibility to other area in the "life" bucket.

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans do a great job in their book "Designing Your Life" expanding on this concept. They break the traditional work / life balance argument into four categories: work, play, love, health.

Another important element in their view is how we see work.

Don’t for a minute reduce work only to that which you get paid for. Most people have more than one form of work at a time.

One suggestion I have for you, would be to expand the love category and think of it as relationships in general. We are social animals, while love is important for us, so to is our need for the extended relationships we have within our communities.

How does this help you?

By taking stock of what your current scoreboard looks like, you will see where you are spending your time and energy and the context of each of those buckets to the other.

If you are feeling out of balance, odds are that one of your buckets (most likely work) will be out of proportion to the others.

This gives you the opportunity to change plans, shift your priorities to start speaking to those areas that you are neglecting.

Comments

This 1 Thing Increases Your Career Capital More Than Anything Else

The Art of Better Decision Making Have you felt scared to make a decision? Maybe you get preoccupied with making the 'wrong' decision? Did you know that 68% of people have admitted to not doing because they thought it would be harder than it actually is. Getting comfortable with making decisions is one of the biggest challenges new leaders face. You will be placed in situations where there isn't enough time to get all of the information. Or even harder, you will be placed in situations where you'll never get more information than what you have. The good news? Making better decisions is something that you can improve by being deliberate with your learning and how you choose to approach it. This is the approach I take to decision making. These have been test and is what I have used over my 15 year career to teach and develop teams. - Accept that you will make mistakes. There is rarely a perfect answer. Getting comfortable with ambiguity is a leadership muscle you need to

Grace Under Fire

Leadership is not a title, and it is not only something reserved for your professional life. One thing that has greatly helped me over the years is finding what is the same rather than focusing on why situations are different. There will always be differences and nuance with whatever you are dealing with, I challenge however, that there is more that is similar or relatable to something else than what is different. True leadership is about how you react, how you handle the circumstances in front of you. True leadership is also how you carry it. For every decision, position or action that you see publically, there are two to four times more that most people never see. Professionally or personally we all carry a lot, we are all going through something all the time. Being a leader means that you have to do more. It is your responsibility to still take care of your team, your peers, your friends, your family. You have to be a guiding light, a steady hand, a source of confidence and comfor

Ego

Ego is one of the hardest things to deal with as a new manager. You are in a new situation, you are most likely leading people for the first time, you are probably a bit younger ... and you just feel like you HAVE to prove yourself. This kinda makes sense right? You were obviously promoted because you knew your stuff and were really good at your old job, so now it MUST be your job to make sure everyone knows how good you are. WRONG! This is the number one mistake most new managers make. I totally get why, we have created this hierarchy in our corporate structures that makes people believe a good supervisor = a good manager = a good director = a good VP. This. Is. Completely. Untrue. The reality is that it takes different skills to be a good leader; and excellence at one level does not automatically mean excellence at the next. To be a good leader, you have to always be trying to check your ego. Yes you are smart, you probably have good ideas, you p

Search This Blog