Is there more to life than this?

Getting out of Balance

The underlying core of my more than 2,000 Time
Management presentations during the last twenty years has
been the concept of "balance." Success in managing our time
has less to do with the tools available to us, such as "to do
lists" and techniques for delegation, as it has to do with
achieving daily balance in our lives. If we are not in balance to
begin with, we are likely to sabotage our success. Successful
Time Management, then, has a lot to do with what we are not
doing.

Here's my list of the seven best ways to "Get Out of Balance."

1. Ignore your Health.

Don't get the quantity and quality of sleep you require. Don't
take time for exercise. Eat the wrong stuff. (90% of those who
join Health and Fitness Clubs today will stop going within the
next 90 days.) Your resistance level will be reduced and you
will be susceptible to all the latest sniffles and flues going
around to ensure that you take advantage of all the sick days
you are allowed. Seventy five percent of all adult deaths are
preventable. We are literally driving ourselves to early graves
in these "hurry-up, stressful" lives of ours.

It's interesting that when someone gets a new car, they bring it
in for the scheduled maintenance, put the right grade of fuel in
the tank, and keep it shiny and clean. Our pets visit the
veterinarian on a scheduled basis. In a recent study, 34% of
the men surveyed said they would not go to the doctor even if
they were experiencing chest pains.

2. Postpone Family time.

They will always be there for you anyway when you get the
time for them. A student once asked me, "what is the best
way to take my four year old on vacation?" I replied, "You take
her when she's four years old." Fifty percent of marriages
wind up in divorce court. Imagine, getting married at age
twenty-five and twenty years later, at age forty-five, you give up
50% of everything you have worked for in your adult life in a
property settlement in divorce court. It's like the squirrel,
gathering the nuts, hoarding away while someone is drilling a
hole in the side of the tree to let all the nuts escape. The
squirrel is too busy to hear the impending threat. The average
working person spends less than two minutes per day in
meaningful communication with their spouse or "significant
other" and less than thirty seconds per day in meaningful
communication with their children. Make family a priority.

3. Don't plan your financial life.

Be assured that your employer, and if not, then the
government, and if not, then maybe a kindly relative will take
care of your needs. Most people arrive at the end of life
financially deficient or dependent upon some type of
assistance from the government or relatives. Most people do
not spend a little of their time, on a regular basis, to create
financial freedom and live their lives they way they "want to",
but rather do what they do because they "have to". Eighty
percent do not want to go to work on Monday morning.
Ninety-seven percent say that if they did achieve financial
freedom, they would not continue with their current employer
or in their current line of work.

4. Stay away from intellectual development.

You have the degree. You read books at one time. Five
percent of the population purchases ninety-five percent of all
the books. The other ninety-five purchase the other five
percent of the books. They don't have time to read them. They
give them away as gifts. You barely have enough time to keep
your head above water, what with work and other interests.
Coast with the knowledge you have. It's draining away from
you daily, but hopefully you filled the reservoir enough early on
that it will carry you through your life.

5. Let your social contacts decide your future.

Follow the advice of your friends about what you should be
doing in your life even if they are not in a place where you
would want to be. Be ever conscious of "What would my
friends say/think if I did . . . ?" Always seek out and act only
with the approval of your peers. Take comfort in the
knowledge that when there is a void in leadership in your life
on how you should be spending your time, someone else will
fill that void and tell you what to do.

6. Let your professional life just happen.

Do not establish a lifetime plan of where you want to go. Take
whatever opportunity and advancement life gives you and be
satisfied. Don't rock the boat. Seek the familiar and avoid the
strange. Play it safe. Make it comfortable. If you chose a
career path when you were eighteen or twenty years old, and
now at age forty you are unhappy, don't consider a change.
Hold on to that decision you made twenty years ago. It will be
like going to a twenty-year-old for career counseling.

7. Avoid spending time in your spiritual area.

Not only in a formal religious venue, but also in our
relationships to others, our community, our environment, and
the universe. Leave those questions to others to ponder.
"When man forgets his Creator, his own creations will turn
upon him."

Dr. Donald E. Wetmore, a full-time Professional Speaker, is one of the
foremost experts on Time Management and Personal Productivity and the author of "Beat the Clock".

 

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Article courtesy of MediaPeak, http://mediapeak.com

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