Tag Archives: Health

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.

Chart Your Addictions

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Want to quit? Then inventory every infraction. Timestamp them into a spreadsheet. Explain to yourself why you gave in and take notes. Run SUM formulas to tally the total number of infractions per month. Never miss a beat. Make a habit out of charting your habit. Keep track of your addiction. Determine whether or not your habit is good or bad, frequent or infrequent – and monitor the change.

If your addiction is staring at you in the face all the time, one of two things will happen: you will get tired of the spreadsheet, or you will give in less frequently. Before long, you may even find yourself addiction free.

Sweat the Big Stuff

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Grade school taught us through graded assignments to sweat the little stuff. As we get older, the sweat never seems to dry away: monthly bills, quarterly reviews, weekly status meetings, to-do lists, deadlines, and more. A constant influx of “urgent tasks” and minutiae attack with little patience. It never ends. Stressed or overwhelmed? Ask yourself: “Will it matter in five years?” Odds are, probably not. Day to day, we preoccupy ourselves with problems that cease to be relevant long-term. Invariably, we solve the issues, or they go away. No big deal. So why hurt ourselves?We need to put daily burdens at bay. We need to raise our children and teach our students to see the big picture. We need to learn to invest in the long-term. We need to learn to live in the higher context of our own lives and appreciate how every beautiful moment adds to the greater whole.

Don’t sweat the little stuff. There are bigger and more important things going on.

Full Schedule, Healthy Mind

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When you have nothing to do, your mind wanders. Sometimes that’s a great thing, especially if you’re in a good place in life. Other times, a wandering mind is a bad thing. When you are in a rut, you can spin yourself deeper by thinking too hard about your situation. Most individuals diagnosed with depression tend to be less active people. Simply put, inactive people have time to think about how unhappy they are.

The mind never stops, no matter who you are. So rather than sitting around spinning it aimlessly, put your mind to something. Anything. A hobby, a game, a project, a better job search, a sport. It all counts. Fill your schedule until you have no time to think. You should never be bored unless you choose to be (after all, no one can keep going without a break).

With a full schedule, you will find yourself considerably more stimulated and inspired (especially if you are able to choose your own activities). If work hours have you beat, you must take the reins of your free time and keep the party going. Don’t just come home at night and go to bed. The mind is healthier when it is free to make its own choices, so use what time you can to do things you want to do.

Happiness and health directly correlate with the amount of time you spend doing things you want to do.

Drive + Joy = Productivity

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Sure, hard work gets things done. It takes drive, inspiration, and commitment to fuel hard work. But hard work alone cannot generate continuous, sustainable results. It takes a magic ingredient and one far too many large corporations fail to mix into the recipe: joy. Employees need to be happy, and you need to be happy to succeed. If a job is a constant influx of hell and bad tempers, people will burn out and crash.

It is not the employee’s responsibility to find or build that joy. In fact, most workers are too afraid to have fun in the office – like children kicking a ball around indoors, they are afraid they’ll get in trouble. It is the responsibility of the boss and the managers to enable an environment of fun and happiness. Not scheduled, forced happiness like luncheons or copy-room birthday parties. I’m talking arbitrary, unrestrained fun. Random field trips, marshmallow fights, grill days, action figure theft, whatever.

We purchased nerf guns for the office. Random shootouts happen daily now. I see endorphins flowing and smiles forming again. You’ll never know when you’ll get four inches of cold styrofoam to the skull. And I’ve gotten more done on one war day this week than all of the truce days combined.

Shape a culture in your office that enables and promotes joy. You can measure the results.

Go to Bed

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I know you have a lot to do. And I know you think there’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead. But there’s really not. You can try to milk your waking hours dry while trying to top the world. Or you can be a human being and get some sleep. I spent my teenage years ignoring everyone’s advice. And now I’m paying for it with slight memory retention loss, heart strain, and then some. But now, I’m looking the other way. I’m face down in a pillow eight hours every night I can get away with it. I’m in business to bank some Z’s. You know what? I feel better for it. Don’t take sleep for granted.

Overtime Pay Is Unhealthy

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Time and a half or double pay was designed to compensate you for working unreasonable hours. Depending on the rate, it can even make extra hours appealing. That’s a problem. Why?

Money does not actually compensate you for the added stress and sacrifices. Money does not buy you your time back. Money does not keep your health in check or award you sleep at night. Overtime pay does not give you your life back. So what’s the point? Just call it a day and go home.

Only work as many hours as you need to get the job done well enough. Do not be seduced by the extra cash to compromise your well-being. You’ll burn out, and it will not be worth it long-term. Cut yourself off, quit for the night, and come in fresh the next day. It is the only sustainable course of action.

The Insolent Stress Multiplier

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Stress is exacerbated by meaningless shit. Forgive my French. But really, we annoy ourselves further when we realize our stress is unfounded in petty problems. Day to day, we face insignificant issues that rile us: spilt milk, car horns, typos, dropped calls, loose change, disorderly management, broken fax machines, failed communication, and missed deadlines.

Few things are life or death; none of these problems are mortal. So why do they matter? Why do we strain our bodies with these issues and preoccupy our minds? Will it really matter in five years?

Learn to laugh at meaningless shit. Turn stress around as soon as you realize it won’t matter long term.

Production Sucks [Film Friday]

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After five long shooting days, only 16 total hours of sleep, editorial madness, 1.9 terabytes of footage, and three dozen script pages, we’ve finally wrapped the sixth original series I’ve produced in little over a year. Absolute madness.

I haven’t slept in 38 hours. Before I say something about filmmaking I might regret, it’s time for bed.

Why Stress If It’s Not Your Fault?

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Perhaps harsh survival advice, but It is not worth hurting yourself over the failure of others. If someone else makes a mistake, why give yourself a heart attack? It is not your fault, so do not pretend like it. And it’s not your responsibility to clean up another person’s mess, whether you know how to or not. So relax; offer a helping hand, and take comfort in the knowledge that you are doing everything that you can to help. Do not stress.

If his or her failure effects you or makes your job harder, it does not resolve the issue to get upset. Anger, frustration, yelling, pouting, and blaming do not smooth things out at all. Stress is almost as unhealthy and contagious as the flu. Your stress will snowball into other people’s stress, which will only come back to hurt you more and make the situation worse. Objectify the problem, take new obstacles at face value, forgive the mistake, and move forward. Do not stress.

If the mistake was made under your leadership, then it is your responsibility. That is one of the risks of leadership, and you need to be prepared to handle the failures of your staff. That said, it is also your responsibility to facilitate recovery from said mistakes. Losing your cool will lose you the upper ground over your problems. Stay focused, think through the situation objectively, realign resources as needed, and act. Decision making is math, not drama. Do not stress.