We always hear the terms “work-life balance” and “quality time”… Is there such a thing as balancing work, as if it wasn’t part of our life? Is the time we spend doing ‘one thing’ somehow less valuable than other times spent doing ’something else’ ?

Like many of you probably do, I attempt to attain a balance in life. However, this is my focus - my drive.

Have you ever attempted to hold water? It slips through your fingers and around your hands, defying your attempts to restrain and constrict it. Much like water, I seek to wrap myself around the rocks and ground, seeking the base of it, deconstructing the very way in which I encounter the world.

Water has always held meaning in my life; I somehow identify with this element of nature. Be it in the form of a soft rain, a booming river rapid, or a trickling pool of water… it always finds its way to its basest form; swallowed by the oceans or scooped up by the sky, only to be released upon the world in some shape or form once again.

This is the way of water, the circle of its life. It finds a state of balance by its very nature.

Mike St. Pierre, spoke on work-life balance at his blog the Daily Saint. He goes on to say:

… what is work-life balance?  Simply put, work-life balance is the art of maintaining the integrity of both your labor and your love.  Someone once said that a job is what you’re paid for and a vocation is what you’re made for.

Certainly, those that have families can empathize with this saying. Quite interestingly, family and work should ideally contain components of each: both labor and love. In fact, all things worth having in my life, to date, have consisted of labor and reward, subsequently increasing the value of what was attained.

Mike goes on to quote Julie Mortgenstern, a fellow writer of David Allen at BusinessWeek:

Work-life balance is not about the amount of time you spend working vs. not-working. It’s more about how you spend your time working and relaxing, recognizing that what you do in one fuels your energy for the other.

This simple concept seems to elude so many, and truthfully escapes me at points as well. When I am stressed and focussed on achieving a singular goal, when I loose focus on the broader context of life by which I should be framing that singular goal, balance slips through my fingers like that water I try so very hard to be…

However, when I am calm, when my mind is like water, when I have found my balance… then, and only then, am I prepared to tackle the objective at hand.

Life does not consist of two sides to an equation: work and life. No, life has many more facets and cannot be so narrowly defined or constrained… It is like that water I so strive to be like, always flexing, always changing, always seeking the answer to that question of balance.

In David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, he explains the “Natural Planning Techniques” as having five distinct phases. These phases are both necessary and are part of everyone’s decision making process in some shape or fashion.

These five phases are: purpose, principals, vision/outcome, brainstorming, and organizing. As I have said many times before, I believe one of the keys in the decision process is defining purpose, or asking “why?” David goes on to say:

 

Here are just some of the benefits of asking “why?”:

• It defines success.
• It creates decision-making criteria.
• It aligns resources.
• It motivates.
• It clarifies focus.
• It expands options.

David believes that everyone wants to win. While I believe this to be generally true, I believe there is a much more fundamental reason: I believe everyone wants to know “why?”:

• Why do I need to write this new syllabus?
• Why do I need to spend time doing the dishes?
• Why am I here and why do I exist - what is my purpose?

In other words, we seek validation - validation for many things, be it something simple like, ”Am I doing a good job on a new project I’m working on?”, or something more complex such as, “Am I being the best father I can be?”

While there are many sources we look towards for validation, and each of us focuses in differing levels of consciousness on the “why” question, fundamentally we all want to know why we are doing something or why we should do something - but for some reason it doesn’t always make itself clear to us.

But is “why” good enough?

Sure you are getting data by asking why, but are you gaining actionable intelligence? The information is now in your hands to assimilate and apply. In other words, the application of your gathered information directed towards a desired outcome is required for success - required to win.

That means you not only have to know how to ask “why” questions, but why you need to ask why. You see my friends, “why” questions can help you uncover your purpose, but asking why is academic unless you are willing to trade fanciful philosophy sessions for rubber-meets-the-road execution.

Those who want to know “why” want to win. In defining purpose, we awaken to realize we are standing on a very dangerous precipice - between action and inaction; and there is a choice to be made. Should we falter in not taking action, we will most assuredly fall into the category of the loser. Asking “why” does not dictate successful outcomes but I believe David Allen said it best:

People love to win. If you’re not totally clear about the purpose of what you’re doing, you have no chance of winning.

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. Ken is also the Director of Technology at Kearns Business Solutions.

Zanshin is a Japanese term referring to a state of relaxed alertness and awareness. In Aikido, we practice this constantly - how to clear your mind, not to anticipate, react to the action at hand - no more and no less.

David Allen has this to say in his book Getting Things Done (link in the sidebar):

Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact.

… The power in a … punch comes from speed, not muscle; it comes from a focused “pop” at the end of the whip… a tense muscle is a slow one. So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else. Clearing the mind and being flexible are the key.

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.

Imagine finding a constant state of Zanshin. Is that even possible?

I for one don’t know yet if that is possible. However, I must remember it is a path to be walked not a destination in which we arrive.

What would be the goal of this you say?

Well, imagine if you will being able to slip into a highly productive state at will. For those that care about being productive, this would be a definite must have, right?

The danger I would surmise most of us “Type-A’s” have would be in the simple fact that we allow our life to become unbalanced. I allow work to flood into my life because I work in a profession, job, company, and role I truly love. However, by letting it become all-consuming, I risk polluting my “mind of water” and I can actually feel the physical and mental drain this begins to cause; I can feel the creep towards burn-out.

The other thing I have begun to realize is that I have allowed my physical well-being to slip. I eat what I want, not what I should; I do not exercice on a regular schedule outside of Aikido, lowering my endurance - both mentally and physically. I do not take enough time for spiritual enrichment. I do not take enough time for family and friends.

The sad thing is that I can rationalize just about any of this: Oh, there’s too much work to do to allow for the other things, just this one project needs to be done, If I only had 1 more hour in the day. But the truth is, as you all know, there is always something waiting around the corner for us productive people and there is never enough time in the day.

And as I step back and re-evaluate my tactical objectives in relation to my life goals, I realize I have taken a detour once again.

So remember: relax but do not become complacement, seek to clear your mind of clutter, and maintain balance in mind, body, and spirit.

Another great link is over at Zen Habits.

David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, has become quite legendary in technology circles as almost a de facto bible of “how-to’s” on being productive and organized.

I have picked this book up for the second time because my life needs another injection of organization - and SANITY…

I have added the link in my sidebar, for those of you interested in what I’m presently reading.

It has been about 2 years since I read the book, and ironically I never finished the book. It’s OK, you can chuckle now.

I got to the last section of the book and stopped. I was supposed to “git ‘r dun” but I realized I had to work on some fundamentals recommended in part 1 and 2 before I could really take on the final section.

So, I embark upon a bold new journey - not to follow this as a religion, but to pick-up just another few tips to help me stay sane and hopefully stay nimble in my responsiveness.

I must confess, I am already encouraged; as I was reading the introduction, David confessed this book was the culmination of 20 years worth of trial and error, and scientific study “in the trenches”. That tells me learning these tips and tricks is not magic. They do take some training and dedication.

Well, I’m off. Wish me luck, and I do encourage you to pick-up a copy and give it a read. It has some really wonderful ideas.

For those of you who are interested as well, David Allen has just released the sequel to this book, Making It All Work. I’m putting the link in ”My Amazon Picks in the sidebar.

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. Ken is also the Director of Technology at Kearns Business Solutions.

When are you most [tag]productive?[/tag] Do you find yourself battling 7 fires at once with a [tag]BlackBerry[/tag] in 1 hand while talking into your [tag]bluetooth[/tag] headset, typing a reply to a friend over IM with another hand, and nodding vigorously at someone standing in your doorway? Is multi-tasking a term that applies to people slower than you?

[tag]Robert Scoble[/tag] posted a nice short blog on the subject, and it was a breath of fresh air coming from some I consider a tad bit insane to stay as connected as he does. What did Robert have to say on the subject?

Want to get something done? Turn off [tag]Twitter[/tag]. Turn off [tag]Facebook[/tag]. Turn off [tag]blog[/tag] comments. Turn off [tag]FriendFeed[/tag]. Turn off [tag]Flickr[/tag]. Turn off [tag]YouTube[/tag]. Turn off [tag]Dave Winer[/tag]’s blog and [tag]Huffington Post[/tag]. Turn off [tag]TechMeme[/tag].

Turn off the distractions.

Today, people are guilty of allowing their attention to be distracted in too many different ways. If it isn’t normal mass media consumption like television, music, or games it’s the business media consumption like [tag]e-mail[/tag], smart [tag]PDA[/tag]’s, and Instant Messaging.

Robert points to “attention management” as being the key. You have to simply choose your goals for the day reasonably. If you know you always have emergencies come up in the day, plan that time in.

A friend told me that he always over-budgets his time by 20%. That may sound like a too much padding, but if you think of the time it takes your mind to shift gears so many times, it really isn’t. Have you ever finished a day where you felt like there was a lot going - you were doing ’stuff’ - but you looked back and really didn’t get anything accomplished?

So here’s my favorite quote from this article: Linda Stone coined the term, “”continuous partial attention” which describes the kind of world we live in…”

Are you a victim of productivity pollution? How do you get clean and stay clean? For all you Twitterheads out there, get David Allen’s book Getting Things Done.