Thinking about my work-life balance

Earlier this week, I sat down for coffee at Balzac’s with my good friend Tina. As she always does, Tina asked me about parts of my life I have a tendency to forgot: my health, my sleeping patterns, my level of personal satisfaction. I can always count on Tina to remind me that I do have a life outside of my work, no matter how hard I try to forget that sometimes.

To be honest, over the past few years, I haven’t been the best (to put it mildly) when it comes to maintaining a positive work-life balance. In fact, when work consumes me, I have a tendency to neglect many of the things I need to worry about most: my mental health, my physical health, and my emotional health — much to the consternation of my friends and family.

Of course, before I make myself sound like a horrible workaholic, I have to say that in the recent past I have been doing a lot to try and maintain a balance between my professional and personal life. While part of this process has been a few changes in my way of approaching work, and fundamental change has come through the realization that it is almost impossible for me to work effectively without using my personal life as inspiration.

Khoi said something similar to this when he posted about his Design Advice for Personal Life a few weeks ago:

I do contend that it is important to maintain a satisfying, diverse personal life alongside a satisfying, challenging professional life. For me, anyway, these two elements are dependent upon one another; I couldn’t do my day job without regularly spending time close to the ones I care about. I’d break down and cease to function creatively if I didn’t have some kind of release for all the frustration that also accompanies the rewards of professional work.

So for those of you who may feel stuck in a career-dominated life as I was a little while ago (and perhaps still am to some extent), I’ve got a few tips that have helped me get move slowly towards a more fruitful balance between my personal and professional lives:

• Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Some of my best learnings come from my mistakes, and if I tried to dwell on the errors of my past too much I wouldn’t have time to learn from them. When you make a mistake, talk about it over coffee with your friends instead of sitting in the office beating yourself over what just happened.
• Let other people do their job. I’ve always been a bit of a micro-manager, to the extent that I’ll often do someone else’s work if it means it will get done quickly and properly even if I have to sacrifice my personal time to do it. If you let other people do their work though, you’ll be surprised how many times they’ll impress you.
• Leave comparison for shopping time. Just because the guy in the office next to you closed a deal, scored a contract, or delivered early on a deadline doesn’t mean you aren’t doing your job well. By constantly judging yourself against other people instead of judging yourself against your personal best, you’re not only doing yourself a disservice, but you’re more likely to over-exert yourself trying to play catch-up.
• File work away when you’re done for the day. My biggest problem when it came to work-life balance was the fact that I always brought my work home with me: I’d wake up in the middle of the night to finish a report, or even leave dinner to take a business phone call. Now, when my work is done for the day, I wrap up it all up and consecrate the rest of my day to myself and the people around me. Sure, inspiration may hit you at any time (that’s why I carry a Moleskine in my pocket), but take a note and keep living your life — your idea will be that much better when you can devote real work time to it instead of sacrificing your fun.

That’s a short list, and most of it is obvious, but sometimes people need a reminder. When look back at your life several years from now, there’s a very low likelihood that you’re going to wish you had spent more time in your cubicle, but a very high likelihood you’re going to wish you spent more time with the people that care about you most. If you ever see me going crazy with work, do me a favor and remind me of that, okay?