Off Balance (eBook)

Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction

Matthew Kelly (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
153 Seiten
Blue Sparrow (Verlag)
978-1-63582-274-8 (ISBN)

The research upon which this book is based shows overwhelmingly that people want satisfaction much more than they want balance. And yet, one of the dominant topics in the area of personal and professional development for the past twenty years has been work-life balance. Off Balance is more than just a book. It presents a system that Matthew Kelly uses with his Fortune 500 clients, his team, and himself to drive increasing levels of satisfaction both personally and professionally. He introduces us to the three philosophies of our age that are dragging us down. He teaches us how to cultivate energy so that we have plenty left for our passions when we are finished fulfilling our responsibilities. And finally, in five clear steps, he shows us how to use his Personal and Professional Satisfaction System to establish our priorities and honor them even when we feel pulled in a hundred different directions. The beautiful thing about satisfaction is that you know when you have it, and you know when you don't. Do you have it? Short, insightful, and life-changing, Off Balance gives us all the tools we need to go to sleep every night knowing who we are, what matters most, and that our lives make sense.

How Satisfied Are You?

One of the beautiful things about satisfaction is that you know when you have it and you know when you don’t. Satisfaction is also something we can increase with effort. So observing what does and does not lead to satisfaction is critical, and taking stock of our satisfaction level from time to time helps us do that. Take a moment to assess the level of satisfaction in your life. Circle a number between 1 and 10 (10 being completely satisfied; 1 being very dissatisfied).

How satisfied are you personally?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

How satisfied are you professionally?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

It may not be very scientific, but it gives you a sense of where you are. This book is about increasing your satisfaction both personally and professionally. Perhaps you know what is required to increase the level of satisfaction in your life, and perhaps you don’t. In my experience, many people are mistaken about what they think will lead to greater levels of satisfaction.

My Own Experience

I have to admit, I don’t have a very balanced life. I suppose that was part of what led me to be so interested in the whole work-life balance discussion. There are times when I go on the road to speak and consult for a week at a time, and those weeks lack what I think most people would define as work-life balance. Some months are busier than others, and those months lack balance. And some years have more than their fair share of enormous projects and restructuring, and those years certainly lack balance. On the other hand, I have a lot more flexibility than most people, take more vacations than most people, and enjoy my work in a way that very rarely makes me feel overworked.

I don’t have balance. The good news is I now know that I don’t want balance. What I do want is satisfaction. Both personally and professionally I have a very satisfying life. Am I completely satisfied? No. I don’t mind telling you that I am both deeply satisfied and turbulently dissatisfied at times. But even my dissatisfaction drives me toward greater satisfaction in the future.

The truth is, I work more than anybody I know, but I lead a tremendously satisfying life.

One of the lies that the work-life balance conversation unconsciously propagated is the idea that working long, hard hours is bad. The truth is, working really hard at different times of our lives is very good for us. There have been times when I have worked eighty-five-hour weeks for a month at a stretch. There have been times when I have written for three days straight with virtually no sleep. There have been times when I have traveled to one hundred cities in one hundred and twenty days. In school there were times when my mates and I would put in twelve-hour study days every Saturday and Sunday throughout the semester.

I guess what I am trying to say is twofold. First, these were deeply satisfying times in my life in and of themselves. We all need and thrive on the sense of accomplishing something. The sense of accomplishment brings with it the reward of tremendous satisfaction. Second, I want to make clear here that I am not sorry I did these things. I don’t regret them. I am not sorry I made these sacrifices. Each experience challenged or encouraged or forced me to develop character. And as important as anything else, each of these choices put me in the room now, and I like being in the room.

What I mean by that is, today I get to work with some of the best companies and the most incredible business minds in the world. I love being in the room, and the truth is, you don’t get in that room by working forty-hour weeks. If you don’t want to be in that room, that’s okay. But if you do, regardless of what it is you do or you want to do, chances are, it is going to take more than forty-hour weeks to get you in the room. Let’s face it, a forty-hour week is the baseline. So I think it is fair to assume that excellence and market dominance are found somewhere beyond a forty-hour week. I didn’t invent the forty-hour week, but it is what it is—the standard. And to ignore that baseline reality is to detach ourselves from the reality, and that never leads to success.

There are some who will say that in this modern age we can work smarter. It’s true, but so can everyone else. And some of the people who make up the everyone else are willing to work smarter for fifty, sixty, or seventy hours a week. Don’t get me wrong, I am not espousing a sixty-hour workweek. I am just pointing out the reality of our times.

For you, work may just be something you do to pay the bills. You can probably have your forty-hour workweek and keep your professional life relatively compartmentalized. Leave your work at work, so to speak. But your work will probably be less satisfying than you would like. Satisfaction comes from emptying ourselves into things.

The other side of this discussion is that I have also found tremendous satisfaction in stepping back from work. One summer a few years ago I took forty days off to walk the Camino. The Camino is a five-hundred-mile trail that begins in the south of France, comes south across the Pyrenees, and then works its way directly west across the north of Spain, finishing in Santiago. People have been walking this route for more than a thousand years.

I first heard about it in a magazine article. I remember thinking it would be a fabulous adventure, and I am not really the outdoors type. I wrote it in my dream book even though I don’t think I ever believed I would do it. Ten years later I flew to southern France with a backpack, a water bottle, a sleeping bag, a map … and started walking. I walked on average twenty miles a day. Some days it took ten hours, and some days in the mountains it took sixteen hours. Just walking. No music, no television, and no cell phone. Just walking. Like no other time in my life I completely unplugged from the world.

This was a tremendously satisfying experience. In fact, when I returned from this trip I spent three days with virtually no sleep writing the first draft of The Dream Manager. And so times of both intense work and complete detachment from work are part of a deeply satisfying life.

Too often we remove both extremes from our lives and rob ourselves of incredible satisfaction. In particular we are tempted to remove those intense periods of work from our lives—days or weeks when we throw ourselves completely into a project. In doing so we rob ourselves of the intense satisfaction that comes from working on a project in such a way. On the other hand, we also resist completely detaching from the world or work from time to time. The perfect example: we tend to vacation with our cell phones and laptops. When we do this, we rob ourselves of the rejuvenation we need to throw ourselves passionately into our work again when we return.

It’s a simple question, and we find it at the very core of the work-life balance discussion. How satisfied are you? Most people would answer the question in vague terms if you asked them. But here’s the thing: essentially, satisfaction is what we are all seeking. Where will that satisfaction come from? The answer to this question is usually not what we expect.

Work-Life Balance Champions

These were the ideas that originally sent me looking for the work-life balance champions. I knew that if I could find a variety of people who were really good at work-life balance, then I could study them and help my company’s clients help their employees develop superior work-life balance. This would lead to a highly engaged workforce and result in massively competitive teams. This is how this book first came about.

The first thing I did was ask well-respected people within various departments at three dozen of the world’s best companies to nominate who they thought was exceptional in the area of work-life balance. I was surprised how easily they pointed them out. My next step was to interview these champions of work-life balance. I interviewed dozens of them, and then dozens more. I delved into their lives, and I was surprised at how open and honest they were about their successes and challenges, both personally and professionally. I could publish a two-hundred-page thesis with my findings, but I will spare you the pain. The bottom-line finding from all these interviews is this: these people are not champions of work-life balance. They...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	15.9.2022
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Personalwesen
ISBN-10	1-63582-274-2 / 1635822742
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-274-8 / 9781635822748

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