The M.A.P. Maker

Forget work-life balance (go with work-life flow)

Do you want work-life balance? Good luck. It's a mythical beast based on one hugely erroneous assumption - that you have control over the world. 

The reality (and you probably don't need me to tell you this) is that you DON'T have control over the world. You don't even have real control over your little corner of it (but don't worry - nobody else does either).

You can make choices and take actions that increase the likelihood of balance. You may even start to feel like you really have it under control. But something will always come along and kick the legs right out from under that illusion. 

You can be humming along in a nicely balanced state and then BLAM!, something goes south at work and you have to work double-time to keep things from going under. Or your child develops some health issues that requires all your extra time and attention. Suddenly your best efforts at balance go out the window. 

Take your best shot at creating a balanced picture, and assume that it will ebb and flow from there. Sometimes it will feel in perfect balance. Sometimes you'll have to kick your work life into overdrive. Other times demands in your personal life will come roaring up. And sometimes it all happens at once. 

Part of creating that work-life flow is staying conscious of what is happening. As the inevitable demands on your time and effort crop up, don't just blindly accept them. Make it a habit to ask questions and stay aware.  

Ask yourself questions like:

• Am I willing to take this additional commitment on? For how long?
• Does this commitment have an end point?
• If not, is the new level of demand on me sustainable?
• If not, what can I do about it?
• If I take this commitment on, what am I willing to drop?

You'll never reach that perfect sweet spot for any prolonged period of time. Life doesn't come delivered in a tidy package like that. But if you stay aware and exercise the power of choice, you can at least stay in the flow. 

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Turn down the volume and contemplate the clouds

There's a scene in the mockumentary film Spinal Tap where one of the band members is describing the special amps they use with volume that goes to eleven, rather than the usual ten.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

For so many of us, that's how we try to live our lives. Multi-tasking. Using technology to squeeze ever more into the nooks and crannies of our lives. Doing everything we can to turn up the volume to eleven.

And ultimately, that becomes mind-numbing. We don't have the time or ability to notice the subtle pleasures of life, our ability to perform at our best suffers, and the stress mounts ever higher.

In response to that, there is a slow movement afoot. Slow living. Slow food. Even slow towns. But how do you start injecting a dose of slow into your life if you're blazing along at top speed? For The Cloud Spotter's Guide author Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the answer is simple. Look up.

His book was a best seller in the UK last year and there is now a web site called The Cloud Appreciation Society. While the book is filled with fascinating facts and anecdotes about clouds, it's just as much an exercise in contemplation and rejection of the accepted goals of modern life, something that fits well into the slow life canon.

"The speed at which clouds develop and change is so gradual; it's quite the opposite of the pace of life in the city. By spending a little time contemplating clouds, you're really forced to slow down. It's a kind of meteorological meditation," he says.

"Most people walk around looking at the floor, but the whole act of looking upwards is almost like a yogic exercise; you broaden your perspective and open your vision."

If you want to do your best work, you need to give your mind time to "lie fallow." I love the idea of using cloud contemplation as a tool to help that happen. It's easy, it's simple, takes no special training and no special doo-dads to make it happen.

How about you? What helps you slow down?

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

10 ways we waste our time (and what to do about it)

If you've been reading this blog for long, you know that when I talk about abundance (the A in M.A.P.), I'm not just talking about financial abundance. I'm talking about multiple kinds. One of those is time abundance.

Unlike financial abundance, where it's possible to increase the sum total of money you have available to you, with time abundance you have what you have. Rich or poor, wildly famous or unknown, we all have one thing in common. Each and every one of us has 24 hours in our day. So if you want to up your time abundance, you have to focus on one thing - how you use that time.

One aspect of creating time abundance is being diligent in evaluating how we spend our time. You have to ask the question, "Is the time I'm spending on this contributing to the life I want to lead? Is this a good use of this scarce and valuable commodity?" If the answer is no, do everything in your power to jettison it.

Alex Shalman has a great blog post putting the spotlight on 10 Global Time Management Pitfalls (and what to do about them). It's a great place to start. I like it because it goes beyond technical efficiency of accomplishing the most with your time into the energy gain or drain things carry with them (remember The Gain to Drain Ratio?).

Here are some of my favorites...

4. Entertaining Bad Company. There really isn’t any excuse for subjecting ourselves to the company of people who are bringing us down in life. The type of energy vampires who suck the life, vitality, optimism and dreams right out of us with constant complaining, as well as their input on why life sucks and you’re going to fail.

• Solution: Get rid of them. The world is full of amazing people, I’ve seen a bunch. Surround yourself with the best people in the world, and keep them close.

6. The Lack of Presence. Ever notice that while you’re supposed to be paying attention your mind wanders to something else? When you get to that something else your mind wanders to the next thing? When you’re living in this state of future, you aren’t giving your 100% to what you are doing. You are constantly wasting the time away.

• Solution: Give your 110% to whatever you are currently undertaking. If whatever is at hand is not worth your 110% than that’s a sign that you should drop it and pursue what’s real for you.

10. Not Being Valuable. The biggest waste of time and oxygen that you can be is not being a valuable person. Not valuable to yourself, to your family, to society, and to the planet.

• Solution: By the time your time expires, make sure you can answer how you’ve left this world a better place than you got it.

For the moment, don't worry about eliminating each and every time waster in your life. Sit down and take stock of the pieces of your life that aren't contributing to the life you want to live. Pick one thing, and for the next week or two, focus on eliminating it. If it's really big, break it into pieces and make it an ongoing project.

Once you have done that, you're ready to move onto the next time waster, and the next...

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

The Great Balance Boondoggle

Life isn't a static phenomenon. It's dynamic, ever-moving, and ever-shifting. So while the idea of achieving a static state of "work/life balance" is appealing to the part of us that desires the comfort of certainty, it doesn't have much to do with the real world.

More accurate is the picture painted in the book Juggling Elephants by Jones Loflin and Todd Musig. In it, they describe life as a multiple-ring circus, and we're the ring-masters tasked with keeping the whole show moving ahead as smoothly as possible.

Rather than paying equal attention and putting equal effort into everything going on in every ring (which is essentially impossible), the idea is to follow the ebb and flow of where that energy and effort needs to go to keep the whole show in sync. As they describe it in an article on the Juggling Elephants site:

The reality is that the idea of balance is baloney! There will always be changing circumstances that will require extra energy on our part in that moment. The key is to look at where you have spent your time and energy over a period of time. Did you act based on purpose? When we look at choosing our routines and making plans, it's not about balance. It's about choosing the right task at the right moment to accomplish the right purpose.

Part of what I love about this idea is that it both allows flexibility and addresses the need to take a happy, healthy approach to multiple facets of life. It lets you evaluate your overall sense of balance by looking at the big picture rather than obsessing on the details of how life unfolds day to day.

For example, I have a friend who seems to be wired to love the adrenaline rush of crunch work. For her, the occasional highly focused deadline driven all nighter is part of what makes it interesting and challenging.  In the long run, if that remained the exception rather than the rule, there would be no problem. On the other hand, if she were to make that her constant ongoing approach, it wouldn't be sustainable. It would negatively impact other rings in her circus, like health, relationships, etc.

Taking a high level view lets you get away from the way things unfold day-to-day and evaluate how it looks in the big picture.

[Thanks to BookBitch for the heads up on The Elephant Juggler.]

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM