Dear Managers and Leaders!
Do you think it is possible to be a leader and still have a balanced life? Aren’t we seeing a lot of leaders who are totally dedicated to their work, so much that they do not have time for their family? Their only friends are found at work, and are they real friends? Is it possible for these people to be great leaders?
To be entirely clear here, I think I need to first define what I mean by having a balanced life. I feel that it means devoting enough time to four domains of life to make you fulfilled and happy. These four domains are: work, family/home, community, and self. I believe these four areas are generic enough to cover most of what can happen in someone’s life.
You will notice that in my definition of a balanced life, I did not mention the perfect blend of the four domains to be balanced. I did that intentionally because I think it will vary depending on many factors. For instance, I consider it is normal that if you manage a project en route to failure, you will devote more time to work than on self-development for a while. Also, if you have a sick kid, you will for sure spend a lot more time with your family than time at work while the sickness lasts. There is no perfect blend. You have to judge what is important at a given moment and deal with it.
The key here is the “for a while”. If you spend all your time working and never have time for friends or family, this is not balanced. If you spend all your time with your lover and forget about your friends, this is not balanced. I know it is the toughest thing to do, but you absolutely need to go back to a normal state and invest in all four areas once the extraordinary situation goes back to normal (once the project is back on track or the kid is healed).
Here is a quick recipe to get to a balanced life:
(1) Recognize that having a balanced life is essential to your well-being
You must first convince yourself that it is important to invest time in all dimensions of your life to be happy and feel totally fulfilled.
(2) Decide to invest in all four areas of your life mentioned earlier (self, work, family, community)
Once you recognized that having a balanced life is important to you, you need to jump into action and start investing in your balanced life.
(3) Create a single TODO list for all aspects of your life
Ensure that everything you need to do is on that TODO list, not just your work items, but also the activities that you need to do with your wife and friends, and what needs to be done on the house. At the beginning of each week, make sure that you plan to do something in all four areas of your life. Balance the elements according to the priorities of the moment, but do something in all aspects of life.
If you have problems getting out of work schemas, you can see the four dimensions of your life as four business units that you are running at the same time. To be truly successful, you have to succeed in all four business units, right? Then make sure that you don’t leave one of them behind.
And what about you, dear leader? Have you mastered the way of balancing your life? What are the strategies you use to succeed in balancing your life? Please share your thoughts with us all!
Until next time,
Remi
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