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Off The Rail - Oct 3, 2004 - Printable Version
- Balancing Act
by Mike Bohling
Webster definition of Balance: A state of equilibrium: Equal distribution Everything in nature is balanced. Life balances death. Male balances female. Day balances night. The food chain is balanced between predator and prey.
The Solar System balances itself in its dance around the Sun. If one planet goes spinning off on its own, the whole system self-destructs.
Balance allows polarities to exist without destroying one another.
Our lives need to be balanced as well. That’s where we run into trouble. We try to balance our careers with health and fitness, our family, our friends, our personal growth, our recreation, and with romance. All of which are equally important.
Yet we lead inherently unbalanced lives, a quick look at the numbers tells the story.
One week consists of 168 hours. 56 of those hours, are spent sleeping.
That leaves us with only 112 hours a week to fit life into.
40 of those 112 hours are spent working. That's 36% of your time right off the top. You might spend an hour preparing for work in the morning, and maybe another hour winding down in the evening. You may even work 50 or 60 hours a week. Don’t forget the commute, those are work hours too. Do you leave the work site to take a lunch break? If you don’t, add that time. Often, my biggest work related puzzles are solved in the middle of the night, while I’m lying in bed staring at the ceiling. How much of your non-work time do you spend thinking about your job? Add those hours in. Now, what’s your total? I’ll bet, that like me, most of you are well over 50%.
Let’s be extremely modest and say work consumes 45% of your waking hours. Balance takes the hit.
Now the tricky part is trying to fit health and fitness, family, friends, personal growth, recreation, and romance into the remaining 55% of your time. How can you balance your career with the rest of your life, when career consumes such a large piece of the pie?
Work is an integral part of the balance. As much as we all wish for it, hitting the lottery and not working would tip the balance scale too heavily in the other direction. Back in 1990, my wife and I came up with this grand scheme to go on a “perpetual” camping trip. Burnt out at thirty. We sold our house and all of our belongings, saved some money, and quit good jobs to pursue the dream. On June 14th, 1991, we hit the road. We figured that we could travel for two years if we weren’t foolhardy with money. We camped in some of the most beautiful places in the country, saw the most spectacular scenery imaginable, met some wonderful people, and were bored stiff. We made it less than a year before we decided to give up the dream and get back to work. That was the most unbalanced year of my life. I came to realize that if I wasn’t working, my free time had no value. Weird, huh?
45% of my life dedicated to career is still way too much, so I’ve spent the past several years trying to figure out ways to get some of it back.
First and foremost, you have to make the best of those hours that are not consumed by career. Life is short. You only get so much time, and have to fit a lot of life into it. In short, do things. Don’t sit on your butt and watch TV. Pry yourself away from the computer games. Learn. Grow. Pick up your guitar. Take your kids to the museum. Visit your Aunt. Go for a hike. Create. Volunteer. Get spiritual. Whatever it takes, don’t lose this day, or the day after. Make the best of every living hour; you’re a long time dead. “He never missed an episode of Survivor”, is not a legacy worth leaving.
Secondly, 45% of your life until the day you retire is spent working, make the best of it. Enjoying your work is a state of mind. I can sum it up for you in two words. Gomer Pyle. Yes, that Gomer Pyle. Stop laughing and here me out. Gomer had it right. He never had a bad day in his life. Sgt. Carter would give him the worst jobs, under the worst circumstances, and ol’ Gomer would just eat it up. Smiling, whistling, and singing out loud. Scrubbing toilets, pulling guard duty a midnight, or digging latrines, it didn’t matter, Gomer was happy to be where he was and gave the task at hand his best effort. Gomer’s lesson is this: It doesn’t matter what job you have, exercise your right to have a good time. There is no value in being cheerless. I realize that life isn’t as simple as a forty-year-old sitcom, but getting into a Gomer state of mind is. When things start getting tough, just ask yourself this, “What Would Gomer Do?”
I read somewhere that 75% of all people that voluntarily leave their jobs, do so not because of lousy pay or benefits, but because of other people. “Can’t stand my boss”. “The people I work with just don’t care”. “The gossipy woman in the next cubicle drives me nuts”. I’d like to let those 75% in on a little secret. You’ll be working with the same people in your new job, and the one after that, and the one after that too. The faces might be different, and their roles may change, but unless you work alone, working with gossips, uncaring, and just plain nasty people, is something everyone has to deal with. Some folks just aren’t happy unless they’re making someone else miserable, and their co-workers are the most convenient targets. How you react is what makes the difference. They can only spoil your day if you let them, so don’t. They’re not worthy of space in your head. They don’t even warrant “irritation” status.
“Fear them not, pity them, for they do not know Gomer”.
There are many other positive aspects of working that people generally don’t take advantage of. Feelings of accomplishment can be had on any job if you’re willing to set the right goals. Personal growth is available in most jobs, if you’re willing to put in the extra effort to earn it. Great friendships can be developed, romance might be found, partnerships forged. It really is all up to you.
Let’s talk a little about recreation. Recreation can be similar to career in the sense that people tend to give it too large a portion of their time. I know that I am guilty of this particular offense. For the most part, if I’m not out playing, it’s usually because I’m busy preparing to play, planning the next playtime, writing about the places where I’ve played before, or looking at maps to find somewhere that I would like to play in the future. It’s a vicious cycle. The truth is that my thirst for recreation has cost me dearly in other aspects of life. I never really focused on a career path, I just kind of landed where I’m at. Higher learning was way too time consuming. I just got lucky in finding bride that is that is willing to be my co-conspirator in recreational pursuits, but even she thinks I get a little excessive sometimes. She draws the line at camping in sub-freezing temperatures, going for more that a week without showering, or living off of the back of a motorcycle for more than a couple of days.
Another problem that many people have with their recreation is single mindedness. They are so absorbed in a single form of recreation, that they have no interest in anything else. If you’ve ever tried to pry a football junkie away from the TV long enough to go fishing, you know what I’m talking about. I spend a lot of time in the company of pool players, and I swear some of these guys haven’t seen daylight in over a decade. They’re not drunks or druggies; it’s just that playing pool occupies every facet of their lives. Granted, they all play better than I do, some of them even make an honest living at it on a professional level, but the price of being the best at something sometimes outweighs the benefits. It astounds me that they don’t see that.
Exercise and health are the last topics that I want to discuss. This one is simple. If you smoke, quit (I wish it were that easy). If you live on junk food, change your diet. If you come home from work every day and plant your butt on the couch, change your habits. If your job stresses you out, learn from old sitcoms. And if you’re not exercising the muscle between your ears on a regular basis, start.
So there you have it folks, the balancing act. Walking the tight wire. My hope is that you’ll take a hard look at where your balance point needs to be, and take measures to achieve it. It only takes a few minor adjustments to tip the scale. Remember, when you put too much emphasis into any one aspect of your life, all other aspects suffer. If they suffer, the people you care about will suffer, and you’ll be too busy to notice. So take care of yourself, take care of the people around you, and above all, take care of the planet. It has a balancing act of it’s own that I’m getting a little concerned about……
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