Excluding the hours you spend at work, what do you occupy
your time with? These pastimes or hobbies could be self-justifiable as your
attempt at finding balance, but they could be much more.
1)
If you spend more than one hour a day, multiple
days a week on a particular activity ask yourself why. There’s a definite possibility the
perpetuated action is non value added to your life.
2)
Compile a list of activities (excluding work for
now) that you spend at least 3-4 hours per week doing.
a.
Exclude activities related to continued
education. Although continued education can be a coping mechanism in itself, it
is a value added activity geared toward the long term enrichment of your life.
b.
Carefully analyze any activities that seem
mindless in nature (i.e. Netflix, video games, TV, etc.) Balance is paramount
to maintaining mental and emotional stability, but be careful that these
particularly mindless activities are not coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms are developed both
consciously and unconsciously to combat anxiety, stress or other volatile
environments. Being drawn to mindless activities can be justified in
moderation, but in excess can be your mind distancing itself from particular
activities, people, feelings or thoughts.
c.
Group non-work activities by social and
nonsocial. Do you spend an overwhelming amount of time being antisocial outside
of your workplace? This is more common in introverts. If this alone time allows
for introspection, try to determine why being alone is truly appealing to you.
d.
Now time to look at your job! How many hours
does it require you to work per week? A typical full time week is 40 hours, but
does your workload cause you to do more? Or, do you keep yourself at work longer
than 40 hours, because there’s something outside of work that you’re avoiding
(i.e. relationships, responsibilities, or the activities mentioned above in
A-C)?
3)
Balance is a universal goal, regardless of
culture, industry or marital status, but why is it so elusive? The difficulty
arises from the plethora of psychological variables added each time another
person impacts your life. The unique mix of stress and anxiety within all of us
is all much more manageable as we develop more of an awareness of the inputs
that feed our outputs. Meaning – it’s not about the conclusion we have reached;
it’s why we reached that conclusion.
The end objective after all is to have that perfect balance between passion and
productivity (through relationships, career, purpose and other avenues in
life).
-C.
