I Jump-Started My Car for a Better Work-Life Balance

I was leaving my house to drive to Day 1 of a conference in Burlington, went to start my car and … it was dead! Not even a whimper. Yikes, I’m going to be late! I belong to AAA, but it would take an hour to send a truck to start my car. So, although it had been over 20 years since I last jump-started a car, I thought I remembered how to do it: 1) Find where I put the jumper cables. 2) Connect a red clip to my positive battery terminal. 3) Attach the other red clip to the positive terminal of the other car. 4) Connect a black clip to the other car’s negative battery terminal. 5) Attach the other black clip to some beefy exposed metal in the engine bay of my car (which is hard to find as so much is covered by plastic). 6) Start the other car. 7) Start my car. It worked! And it cost more anxiety than time; I was on my way in 15 minutes and got to the conference on time. It felt good to start the day by solving a problem quickly.

… Which allowed me to learn more about work-life balance in one of the hour sessions at the conference.

It was led by Neal Whitten, an ex-IBM project leader, and a popular speaker on leadership and project management. Like many of us, he has struggled with work-life balance, which he sees as achieving an acceptable harmony between your work and personal lives. It seems like a growing challenge to juggle the demands of the job and non-work life, especially with technology making it harder to disconnect from work, and our lives feeling overbooked. We all want both achievement and enjoyment, and an acceptable balance helps.

What struck me from this session?

• First, figure out what you want. If you could design satisfying work and weekend days, what would they look like? How much work, recreation, relaxation, family time, social activities? That’s important because everyone is different. Some people enjoy spending most of their waking hours doing their work; it energizes them. Others crave more down time. It helps to model how you think you’d like to spend your time.
• Neal really emphasized this – Many of us have a to-do list, but know your top three priorities and make sure you make progress on them each day. You can have other priorities. Maybe ten total. But successful people focus on their top three.
• Limit time-wasting activities. Most people know places where they do not use their time well.
• Limit time in meetings. If possible, attend meetings only if: 1) they will provide information you need or 2) you have information someone else needs. This suggestion could be hard to pull off.
• If your work life is too dominant, make it a goal to create a personal life that has more meaning.

These seem like helpful suggestions to me. You’ve probably heard some of them before. What have you found helpful in finding a satisfying work-life balance?