Hello!
I hope you all had an amazing week.
I kicked off some vacation time this week, getting it started with some time with members of my neighbourhood. We had a community gathering on our beach, complete with a pig roast. After a fantastic meal, my neighbour and I put up a custom-built screen, and we had a movie night under the stars. We watched the classic ‘The Great Outdoors’ starring John Candy (it seemed an appropriate choice for a movie on a beach).
These are the moments that make up life, the things you’ll remember over the long term.
Make sure you take time to create memories that will endure.
Life’s a Stage: Don’t Let Work Hog the Spotlight
How did you end up with the job you have? If you are like most people, you sort of ‘stumbled’ into it. There was likely some confluence of events that led you to the job you have, someone you knew who mentioned work you’d done to someone, something rather random.
Which is a terrible way to decide how you will spend so much of your life!
Instead of trusting your career to random events, design it. Be intentional. Design your career to fit the lifestyle you desire.
I bet you’re like most people, wishing there more hours in a day just to catch up with the relentless pace of your work life. You feel you’re falling farther and farther behind, despite your efforts. Items on your to-do list multiply like bunnies, leaving you feeling overwhelmed. And that is just work. Then you add in your personal goals, hobbies, and family time, trying to squeeze those things in the cracks that remain.
That is completely backwards.
Stop trying to organize your life around your work. Instead, organize your work around your life.
That is a radically different approach, one that will challenge you. It requires a complete shift in mindset and requires you to take radical ownership of your work life.
I am amazed at how easily people shrug their shoulders and give up all their personal power concerning their work. They too easily just accept that “that’s just the way it is”, and “I need to pay the bills”, and so they change nothing.
They surrender.
And by surrendering, by putting work before their hopes and dreams, they sentence their dreams to death. Because let’s be honest, after you’ve put everything you’ve got into work, there’s not much left to give to the other areas of your life that matter.
Don’t relegate your dreams to the bits of time you have left. Instead, design your work life to support your dreams.
Your Life, Your Canvas
Each one of us has a unique canvas, composed of several dimensions of life;
- health
- relationships
- finance
- spiritual
- recreation
- personal growth
- spirituality
- work
Each stroke on this canvas contributes to your unique masterpiece – your life. Your work is important, but it’s just one piece of your masterpiece. Instead of letting it dominate, integrate it harmoniously with the other hues of your life.
Work-Life Design: A Paradigm Shift
Getting your work to fit into the overall picture of your life takes intention. It won’t happen by chance; you need to engineer it such that it fits properly with the other pieces of your life. It’s not about making drastic changes or chasing an unrealistic dream of “the perfect job”. Instead, it’s about making mindful choices. About understanding your needs and arranging your work accordingly. It’s about maximizing the alignment between work and the other aspects of your life.
It will take time and effort to get there, but is certainly worth doing.
Practical Steps to Design Your Ideal Work-Life
- Build a stable foundation. This is the number one mistake people make; they try to run away from where they’re at, without having a proper foundation upon which to build. When you try to create from an unstable and chaotic state, you can’t build anything stable. See here for some thoughts on how to build this stability before you start.
- Define and document your “ideal day”. Reflect on and write out what your ideal day would look like. Don’t worry about “how” it would be possible. Imagine that you magically had all your expenses taken care of somehow. How would you want to spend your time? Hint – don’t just think you’d want to sit on a beach somewhere, sipping margaritas. That makes a great vacation, but is no way to spend your life. What would you want to spend your time doing? Get detailed. Shockingly, few people know what they would do with themselves. What do you want?
- Identify your values. What truly matters to you? Not what you think other people think, but what truly resonates with you at your core. I found it quite challenging to narrow my list down to its essence; try to land somewhere between three and five values. You must know what is most important to you.
- Know your strengths. Getting ahead in the world is hard. You make it a lot harder if you work against nature. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses helps you move forward better by using your natural abilities. There are several approaches to learning what your strengths are. Personally, I am a fan of the CliftonStrengths34 assessment, and I include this as part of my career transformation coaching program.
- Set clear boundaries. When you work, work hard. When you aren’t working, make sure you don’t work. If you’re not working, you must avoid the temptation to think about work, to plan, to ruminate, to figure out the right angle to take. Not working is literally one of the best productivity hacks. By taking your mind off of the problems, by allowing yourself to relax, you end up coming up with the most effective solutions. That is why your best ideas come while you’re in the shower, or when you don’t even realize you’re thinking about the problem.
- Reflect on what flexibility you have in your work. People assume they can’t change things in their career, but often they simply haven’t tried. They just accept things are the way they are. If you are a successful professional, you have way more flexibility than you think. Your organization needs you to deliver results, and they are typically quite flexible with people that get those results. Get creative here, coming up with some ways you can do your job effectively while allowing yourself a bit more freedom. Maybe it means starting work earlier, but then finishing earlier. Maybe it means taking Wednesdays off completely, and working a bit of extra time on the other days to make up for it.
- Optimize Your Work Processes. There are tasks that consume too much of your time without yielding proportional results. Apply the Pareto Principle or the 80-20 rule. It suggests that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the activities. Identify and focus on these high-impact tasks, and ignore the rest to the extent you can. You’ll likely find that no one even notices.
- Plan and time-block. So you know what your ideal day looks like and have some great insight into yourself and your work. Now take that information and – with intention – plan your day. Decide what activities you should have in your calendar, and schedule them. Especially the things that are most important to you. Schedule them. If you don’t carve time for what is important to you, someone else will happily schedule your time for what is important to them. That is just how it works. Make sure your day includes time for physical activity, for some relaxation, and some time with the people most important to you.
- Experiment. The best way to find what works for you is to play with it. Try things out. Take some little steps that bring you closer to your ideal day and then experience it. Note how you felt. Keep tweaking and adjusting, a bit at a time, moving yourself closer and closer to your ideal.
- Review & Revise. Your life circumstances and priorities will change over time, so should your work-life design. Regularly review your arrangement, note what’s working and what’s not, and make necessary adjustments.
Remember, designing your work-life isn’t about achieving perfection. It’s about making small, consistent efforts towards your vision for your life.
Don’t condemn your dreams to death. Design a work life that allows you to soar.
This stuff is simple, but not easy. Which is why I am not just a career coach, but also a work architect. I work with people just like you to design and engineer the work life you want, rather than the one you feel stuck with.
Learn how I can help.
Quotation that I have been pondering
I have a confession to make; I have been guilty of not “practicing what I preach”. Sometimes I speak negatively to myself, beating myself up for falling short of my own expectations. I continue to strive to improve myself in this area. I don’t think I’m alone in this struggle; it’s a common theme I’ve noticed.
Which is why this quote from Steve Maraboli resonated with me;
“How you treat yourself sets the standard for how others will treat you.”
It is so obvious when you see it written that way. Everyone wants to be treated well, obviously. Yet, if you can’t treat yourself well, how can you expect this treatment from others?
Lead by example, showing others the type of treatment you expect. Speak kindly to yourself, treat your body and mind right, and allow yourself to live with grace. The more you do so, the more you’ll get that treatment from others.
Journal Prompt
When you are tackling a long-term project, a big and ambitious goal, it is normal to be overwhelmed. There is just so much. You get lost in even getting started, not being able to imagine getting all the way to the end. It is just so far away!
When you feel overwhelmed by the distance between you and your dream, stop and consider this simple question:
“What is it I need right now?”
You don’t need to know all the steps to achieve your goal. You only need to understand what’s the next thing to do, what’s the next immediate step that will bring you closer to achieving what you seek. Once you take that step, you’ll see another next item.
Have faith in yourself and move forward.
