Since accepting a management position, I've found myself in constant battle maintaining a work to life balance.
Some things I worried about:
- How to keep my team happy and provide adequate service.
- How to keep my clients happy and in doing so maintain or improve my company's reputation.
- How to make time for my partner
- How to set myself up for family and by that I mean - not progressing down a path where work consumes late nights and weekends. I want my kids to know me and I want to love and experience as much of their growth as possible.
You get the idea … I've tied worry to life balance bacause I find that even when not at work, its easy to take home the worries of the day.
So here are some early tools I’ve found to maintain balance and combat worry:
1. The first is a quote by Brian Dyson (CEO: Coca-Cola) on life balance. I use it when making those work or family decisions (when it always seems to be work):
“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air – work, family, health, friends and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is the rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life”
2. Having a plan of action returns the power to you. Answer the following questions empowers you.
- Whats the worst that could happen?
- Accept the worst as an outcome?
- Devise a plan to improve on the accepted outcome?
3. Process for dealing with problems and worry at work from Dale Carnegie's "How to stop worrying and start living":
- Write down a clear problem statement - What am i worrying about?
- Take time to collect facts about the problem
- List all solutions and their probable consequences - What can i do about it?
- Strive to keep emotion out of thinking for solving problems
- Pretend you're impartial, collecting information for someone else.
- List all possible outcomes against and for each solution
- Choose the best problem solution
- Action the problem solution - do something about it.
- At this point, stop thinking about worrying about the consequences. The time for thinking has past and its time to commit to action.
