How to Achieve a Balanced Life

With ever-increasing demands in both our professional and personal lives, work/life balance can feel impossible to achieve. And yet, achieving a balanced life is critical to our health, happiness, and success.

Many, if not most, would agree that they’re being asked to take on more responsibility…usually without additional staff or resources. The good news is that your boss likes your work and believes you can accomplish even more. As if this didn’t keep us busy enough, most of us find that we have an equal number of demands and things we need to accomplish at home. It isn’t uncommon for the leaders we work with to tell us that they haven’t taken a “real” vacation for a year or two.

The challenge for most of us reading this blog is that there’s always more work that needs to get done. The majority of our clients have experienced continued improvement in their business and profitability over the last two years. What we haven’t seen from these clients is an increase in employees hired to manage the increased workload. In fact, many organizations are experiencing three important things:

First, with our healthcare and insurance clients, they are uncertain what President Elect Trump and his administration will do with the ACA and how it will impact their business.

Second, the workforce in place is doing a fantastic job handling the increased workload.

And third, these first two findings are rewarding their decisions with strong profits. So, since a bunch of new employees are unlikely to show up tomorrow to handle the increase in workload, all of us need to ensure that we have a plan in place to effectively manage and balance both our personal and professional lives.

Whether you are a business owner, CEO, senior executive, manager or front line employee, the principles of maintaining a successful work-life balance are the same.  Here are ten proven tips to help you successfully manage a healthy and happy personal and professional live.

Develop a clear, positive vision for a balanced life. Almost everyone has a vision. Some people have a vision of being a successful business person. Others have a clear vision of providing extraordinary customer service. Some people are very focused on what’s important to them personally, and have a positive vision of being spiritual; a great significant other, parent, or friend. However, very few people have a vision that successfully encompasses all the areas of their life that are important to them.

Have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish, whether that’s a strong spiritual foundation; physical fitness; a happy family; or happy employees and happy customers. Many people claim the word “vision” is overrated. But, our research from over 100,000 employees supports our findings: You need to see what you want to become…and then put a plan in place to turn your vision into a reality.

Prioritize what needs to be done. As much as we love talking about multi-tasking, the reality is we can only do one thing well at a time. Prioritize your work, prioritize your life, and do the things that will ensure you’re able to turn your vision into reality. When you don’t get your priorities in order, bad things happen. When your priorities are misaligned in business, you can disappoint your boss and fellow team members to the point where you might even lose your job. In your personal life, misallied priorities can result in you losing your family, your health, or worse, your life. Just like dieting and exercise, balancing your life by getting your priorities in the right order is the key to your success.

Focus on results – not tasks or activities. Reading your email or surfing the internet is one of the greatest examples of participating in an activity that may have nothing to do with a result. Yes, being responsive to emails is important, as long as doing so is leading to results. At work, re-designing a new procedure to overcome a problem or developing a new product are both examples of results. Being at home at night is an activity. Listening to your significant other to build an even stronger relationship or helping one of your children with their homework are also activities, but they are activities that produce important results.

Get organized. People literally spend years of their lives looking for things that are lost, misplaced or missing. The more you can establish place habits for the things that you utilize in your life, the more time you will have to do the things you want to do. And, the less stress you will have looking for things that are not where you thought you would find them.

Build in margins. As all of us get busier, we lose the margins in our life. We say yes to every request for our time, and then find ourselves rushing from one activity to another. If you know an activity will take you two hours, block off two and a half or three hours to accomplish the task. This also helps you exceed customer expectations – if the job will take two days, tell the customer three days and then strive to exceed their expectations. That way, you still have margin for error when other tasks come up that need to be done, or there’s more traffic on the road than you anticipated.

Learn to say “no.” Every day, people ask you to do things. To be successful in accomplishing your vision of living a balanced life, you need to feel good about saying “no.” For the amiables of this world who find it extremely difficult to say “no”, we recommend a “conditional no.” Instead of looking someone in the eye and saying, “No, I’m not going to do that,” tell them, “I don’t have the time in my schedule to honor that request at this time, but it’s something I may consider doing in the future.” Saying “no” may be difficult in the short run, but ultimately leads to a much happier and more meaningful life.

Hire the right people.  What we have learned from our Best of the Best leaders, is that when they hire a PURE (Previously Undetected Recruiting Error), they are quick to coach, counsel, and train this employee.  When that doesn’t work, they waste no time sharing the employee with their best competitors. It’s hard to take time off from work when you don’t trust your team members to do their jobs. Hire the right people, communicate a clear vision and goals, and then trust them to get the job done, even in your absence.

Buy tickets.  Terry Paulsen, a great consultant, speaker and past President of the National Speakers Association, encourages people to buy tickets. At the beginning of the year, plan out all the places you want to go and things you want to do, and buy the tickets or make the reservations. When you have tickets and reservations, you actually end up going!

Keep important things in perspective. For the really high achievers, remember, they don’t modify hearses with trailer hitches so you can haul all the things you’ve accumulated with you to heaven. I have learned this the hard way… when someone dies, the most important things they accumulated will end up in a box.

Celebrate success. There are too many people in this world who are fond of the line, “I will be happy when…” This life will be over in one single heartbeat. Each day, acknowledge what you have accomplished, count your blessings, and celebrate your success.

Whatever you do daily, the hardest thing to acknowledge is that you have control over the balance in your life. Take ownership, plan ahead, and put these 10 tips into practice. We are confident that you will have even more control over your success, happiness, and work-life balance.