Are You Out of Balance?

Do you have work/life balance? This is a very common question now especially amongst executives. If you are one of them you might like to take some time to look a little more closely at your life to answer this. One often relates work/life balance to the amount of hours you spend at each. But what I'd like to focus on here is how 'effort balance' is important to your work/life balance. Do you apply the same amount of dedication and thus effort to all of the other areas of you life like you apply to your work if you're a hard dedicated and long hours worker? Often work and careers are shown a lot of dedication because so many people see you at work, you 'have' to go to work and not many people see what you do in other areas of your life... nor are you often measured there! And due to these factors your efforts can very quickly and easily become out of work/life balance.

Some times you may want to and need to sacrifice time at home for time at work, time with your partner, family, children, friends, health, holidays etc. But what are you like when you get there? Do you dedicate the same amount of effort and energy into the other areas of your life once you get there such as when you're with your partner, exercising, children, family, friends, health, holidays? If you answer no to at least one of these then you might want to start setting some goals in this/these areas for effort. For without 100% effort there is not 100% attainment and therefore you are not reaching your potential in that area, are neglecting that area and therefore simply out of work/life and effort balance.

Working on your work life balance is just as important as a business owner working on their business not only in their business. It's easy to live our lives and forgot to work on our lives and where we want to go. Work/life balance requires planning, control, effort and sticking to your plan without 'allowing' another area of your life to get in its way!

Without work life balance and 100% equal effort in all areas of your life you can feel out of control and balancing requires control... Just as much as too much of one thing is bad, not enough of some things are when things are going to give. Life can be like a juggling act!! Managing all these things can become overwhelming and sometimes make you feel like it's just too much and anxiety and stress hit you head on!

If this sounds familiar here are 7 steps to help you gain more work/life balance in your life:

• Group together the different areas in your life such as work, family, relationship, hobbies, health & fitness, personal time etc.
• Next to each area write down how much effort you apply to each on a scale of 0% - 100% and if not 100% write one point that would make this % increase.
• Write down the number of hours you spend each week on that area.
• See if your life looks in balance to you.
• If not, decide on areas that you can reduce time and give to something else and point out those that you are simply being lazy in and could provide more effort.
• Commit to the points that would increase your effort that you wrote down in point 2
• Then assess your results, if you're applying 100% effort in all areas of your life and everything looks in balance then well done! If not, focus on applying more effort to the areas lacking in the next month and watch the results, your satisfaction and enthusiasm grow!

For more information contact Jacqueline Pigdon T: +61 (0) 404 362 379 E: jacqueline@jinalife.com