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This term is way over-used. Many people talk about how they need to find balance between their work and home life. There are countless books on this topic and many talk about how you need a proper balance to maintain proper health. If you only look at your life as wanting more balance, you will set your self up for failure. How do you define balance? Are you constantly looking at your life as 50-50 or 80-20 or 70-30? These are just numbers.
A better, more results focused view of this topic looks like this:
What do you want to focus on? ? | What are you going to stop doing and what are you going to start doing?
Focus
Here are some examples of what to focus on
- Spending more time in the evenings with my wife and kids
- Create better presentations to potential clients
- Lose five pounds this month
Start | Stop
If you want to follow-through on the items that you want to focus on, then you need to stop doing some things and start doing some new things. Let’s build on the examples stated above.
Spend more time in evenings with my wife and kids.
Going to stop working on work activities between 6.00pm – 9.00pm | Going to start talk to my kids about their school work each night.
Create better presentations to potential clients
Going to stop putting this work off till the night before the presentation | Going to start looking at better options for presenting information to clients.
Lose five pounds this month
Going to stop eating out for lunch everyday | Going to start working out before work | Going to start writing down everything I eat each day.
The benefits of this process. (This is really the huge takeaway)
If you really nail down your focus and adapt your thinking to a higher level, you will really start to feel more energy and will be a much better person in the process. Focusing on work life balance, typically leads to a negative approach because your focus is on obtaining some type of number regarding hours spent or tasks achieved. The focus needs to be on people and not on time.
In addition, if you really want measurable change, look at the process and see how you are doing with respect to the items you want to stop doing and the items you want to start doing. These items are measurable and you can see results from your efforts. Also, you have a specific action that you are trying to change or add. This is where the balance occurs. If you only stop doing things, you never really grow. If you start adding new things and never change your old habits, you will never be able to move ahead.
Focus / Stop / Start – – Think about it as an alternative to the current work life balance mindset
My personal sidenote on this topic:
When things are looking a little bleak or I am dealing with some personal issue where I get a little down on myself, I turn to my Faith in God through prayer and I am quickly humbled to know that I am not always in control. It is at this time that I get a proper perspective and I look closer at where my focus currently is at and I look at ways to stop doing some things and start some new things.
With a proper focus, you will feel more energized and you will have a much better outlook on your current environment. You will become more productive and people will notice a change in the way you approach your work and family life.
I attribute this article to my continued focus to grow more in my Faith in God and serve others. I could not do this all on my own. Thanks for reading and I hope you, too will find comfort in this article.
Picture Source: Pixabay
