Tag Archives: Balance

Create

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Balance between input and output is key. Lately, consumption is easier than ever. Distractions run amuck. But the tools are easier than ever, too. Save for more distractions, you have no excuse to procrastinate your work and talent. If you’re not creating, you’re consuming. You’re not giving back to the world and people in it who give you so much. You’re living a selfish relationship with life. Good luck leaving a legacy. No thank you.

Write. Paint. Speak. Raise children. Build things. Get your hands dirty. Give back to the world and the people you care about. Make a difference. Don’t sit still. Don’t wait and watch. Don’t only take in – put out (no innuendo intended). Try not to concern yourself with turning your creation into your business – if you create well enough, the business will come. Focus on building great things and gifting them to all. It’s good for the soul (and can’t hurt your legacy).

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Take Life At Your Own Pace

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There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s your life, you can do what you want. Do not let anyone slow you down or push you along. You learn from, work through and experience life differently than everyone else. Embrace that – and fight back if you need to. Going too fast may burn you out and going to slow may drain your soul. Only you know your own equilibrium. Find balance and stand up for it.

You Always Have An Enemy

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The human spirit does not lend itself well to complacency. Never assume everyone is on your side. Even with widely accepted “fact,” rebels always stand up. To many, the world is only a few thousand years old. To others, genocide has merit as a method for population control. You can never completely convince everyone to join your team. Even when you do, someone will wake up in denial and challenge you out of an intuitive aversion to conformity. To keep the species alive, it is our nature to challenge each other. To keep the universe in balance, the coin must have a flip side. There is no peace without war. No light without dark. No opinion without opponent. Accept the conflict. Embrace symbiotic relationships.

Life In Thirds

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With the traditional 40-hour work week, most people’s lives are roughly split into thirds – work, sleep, and personal time. Work provides for your human needs, sleep keeps you healthy, and personal time enriches the soul. Without question, these thirds must stay in balance to keep you sane.

Each third must not infringe on the others to keep you healthy. Work must not take over and instead provide the means to make the most out of your personal time. Neither work nor personal time should threaten the time you spend taking care of yourself. Moreover, work is necessary to sustain your life and activities. Keep the three in equilibrium and life will be good.

No, you do not have to spend an equal amount of time on each to keep the three in balance. If anything, you should maximize personal, soul-enriching time as much as possible (it often takes a lot more than you realize to truly balance out your work). But you can definitely add up the hours in a week to determine whether your work/life balance is out of whack or not.

Keep your time in check. Keep your life in balance. Juggle the three balls well and you may yet find happiness.

Mondays Should Die

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You had an amazing weekend with family and friends. Parties. Activities. Errands. Rock and roll. Guess what? Back to work! It’s Monday time!

I hate Mondays. I am willing to bet you do not like them either. A great taste in your mouth soured by the burdens of a professional life. Most people have really rough starts on Mondays. Few deals get closed. Very little work gets done. Most people spend the better part of their day trying to switch into productive mode. After a short burst of personal time over the weekend, Monday rear-ends and whiplashes the hell out of you.

I say we kill Mondays. That’s right. Kill Monday. Embrace the three-day weekend. A day to be social, a day to do personal work, and a day to rest. Start the week on Tuesday and only work four days. Think you won’t get the same amount of work done? Just try it. I guarantee that you will fill the time with the same amount of work.

Worried you’ll miss customers or clients on Monday? Most people are preoccupied with their own hellish Mondays to care about your business, so no worries. And besides, if you set the expectations of outsiders by informing them that you do not operate on Mondays, they will catch on, deal with it, and not resent you. You do not want the complaining customers anyway.

But every week needs to start, right? So won’t starting the week one day later just shift the burden of hate to Tuesday? Perhaps. But have you ever heard of the work-life balance? Splitting the week nearly in half with weekend and work week will help balance the amount of time you invest in yourself and invest in your work. By the end of the long weekend, you will feel more inclined to pick up the pen again. After you are rested, caught up, and partied out, you will feel the need to get back to work. In fact, you may even WANT to go back to work.

And why not take Friday off instead? Since most employees are procrastinators by nature, Friday is valuable real estate for last minute productivity. And since other companies you do business with are probably procrastinating as well, there will be less friction if you continue to operate on Friday. While everyone else is working on Monday, you can take the time for yourself to recover from your weekend and rest up before a new week. A healthier team and a healthier life. 

Sound utopian? Maybe. But worth the experiment. When I run a business, I plan to give it a shot.