As a leader and an executive coach, in 2022 the question that came up most in conversations with my team and from my clients was – “how do I achieve a better work life balance?”.
Interestingly, this is a question that plagues practically every level of management and is omnipresent across industries. From my conversations, here are my 3 top takeaways / observations and learnings on how you can bring a better balance:
1) Don’t strive for Work-Life Balance. Instead strive for a Balanced Life
The Work-Life balance approach is fundamentally unbalanced in addition to being too narrow and restrictive. It gives excessive importance to “Work” and narrowly defines all aspects of “Life” under one bucket. “Life” is too rich, varied and exciting to be boxed in and restricted to a scale trying to balance “Work”.
The real question to ask yourself is – “ Is my life in Balance?”. An honest response to this question will entail:
a) Thinking about and enlisting the important elements of your life that you would want to be in balance – most common elements usually are Family, Health, Career, Hobbies and passions.
b) Are these in balance – as soon as you start listing these elements, in most instances you would know for yourself whether your life is in balance or not
A balanced life doesn’t mean allotting equal time to all the elements you listed. Instead, it is about accepting that any point in time in your life, certain elements will demand more time than the other. The key to feeling balanced in life is to consciously make the choice of where you allocate your time, because if you don’t, someone else will make the choice for you.
Depending on your age and the stage of life that you are in, the different elements of your life may need more focus than the other. Sometimes it’s your career, sometimes your family and sometimes it may be pursuing a hobby or checking-off a bucket list item. In most cases where the “Work-Life Balance question came up”, career was hogging most of the time and any remaining time was split between family and health depending on where the need was at any given time. If you relate to this situation, you urgently need to take a step back and re-calibrate.
2) Consciously calibrate the balance between the key aspects in your life. Regularly!
Calibrating starts with deciding the time horizon that you want to consider. There are different approaches, but I prefer starting broad and narrowing in:
a) Whole-life view: Looking back at my life so far, do I feel my life is in balance. Are there elements that feel unbalanced? Are there elements that I would like to focus on more in the future?
b) Short term view: over the next 2 – 5 years, what elements will need prioritization in my life. For example: You plan to pursue higher education or are planning to start a family or focused on getting a promotion or plan to start laying the foundation to start your own business
c) 1 year view: how does this all translate to the upcoming year. What will a balanced life look in the coming year – which elements receive more focus and which ones will get reduced focus or be on the back burner
Being deliberate about your choices, helps you define what balance means and to work towards it consciously.
This is not to say that everything will go to plan. Life, as they say, will happen and you will need to do what needs to done in any given moment, day, week or month. But every now and then, stopping to do a “Is my Life in Balance” check-in and course correct as needed, gets you back in control.
The beautiful thing about check-in points is that there are multiple ways to trigger them – a long walk, relaxed drive, a calming vacation, a cliched forward that touches a nerve or annual new year resolution. Take your pick…
3) Monitor your body battery everyday
Do you let your smart phone battery run out of charge? Do you make it a point to charge it daily? If by midday you are running low on charge, do you consciously manage your usage, shut down unnecessary apps to stop battery drainage till you get to recharge? Am fairly certain you answered YES to all the questions and would have got a drift of where I am headed.
The body battery (mental and physical) works in a similar way. However, most of us do not follow any of the above steps for the body battery that we so instinctively do for our smartphone, knowing very well that unlike the smartphone, the body battery cannot be replaced. If we did follow though, it would look something like this:
Bring in awareness of what drains your physical and mental batteries and what charges them. Think beyond the obvious.
Take 10-15 minutes in beginning of the day to check-in on your battery status. What's your starting charge? (P.S. : 10-15 minutes are about 1% of a 24 hour day. If you cannot afford yourself that, you need to urgently recalibrate)
If possible do an intra-day check-in and recharge as needed. If you cannot recharge, consciously prevent the drain.
Repeat every day
The interesting thing about the body batteries are that they work in tandem complimenting each other – when you are down on physical energy you can push yourself with mental energy and vice versa. It is also true therefore that they can also drain each other. The more aware you are of what drains or recharges you, the more adept you become at managing your batteries. The internet is rich in resources to build this awareness and tools to help recharge on the go. Choose the one that works best for you.
Here's wishing you the very best for a balanced life in 2023.......
These are my personal take aways that I have shared with an intention that it benefits whoever can read or relate to them. If these strike a chord, I am happy for you. If you don’t relate or agree with some or any of the above, that is fine too.
Should you like to connect further, I can be reached at vivek@coachingwithvivek.com