Balance is a matter of mission and focus

Ask the Coach

By Marshall Brown, CPCC, President, Marshall Brown & Associates, Washington
published in AssociationTRENDS. reprinted with permission.

Q. I try really hard to balance my life and work. Sometimes it can be frustrating. Any ideas how I can be more productive and also save some time?

Often, it seems we’re so busy putting out daily fires that we don’t ever accomplish anything of real significance – those things that would make us happiest in the long run. Life becomes something to “get through” instead of an exciting path to greater fulfillment.

The efficiency of technology only increases the pressure assn staffers feel to do even more than ever before. All of it leaves professionals feeling too busy and robbed of a sense of accomplishment. So, what can you do to increase personal productivity? I’ll share some tips with you to help get more done in less time, and to find a way to do what you really want to be doing.

Often “busyness” is a cover for not knowing what the best thing to be doing is. To get around this, you have to know what your priorities are in the moment. To determine this, you need to know what your larger life priorities are.

Stephen R. Covey, best-selling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, suggests writing a personal or organizational mission statement, a statement that summarizes your higher purpose and goals in life.

Without a mission, you won’t know how to say “no” to tasks. Once you figure out what you want to say “yes” to, you will know when to say “no.”

People can learn all the self-management tricks in the book, but none of it will be worth a dime if there’s no follow through. That’s where self-discipline comes in. There’s no easy, painless way to enforce self-discipline, but if staffers don’t use it, they will be left forever unfulfilled.

Brian Tracy, one of the world’s top business speakers and author of 35 books on business and personal productivity, offers some very simple advice: Start doing what you know you need to do. Stop putting it off until later. Once you start seeing the results active self-discipline yields, the desire for the payoff begins to become greater than your resistance to taking action.

To promote successful self-discipline, Covey and Tracy suggest breaking down tasks into smaller chunks and then focus on taking some first steps. All your tasks and goals won’t feel so overwhelming, which makes it easier to take action.

David Allen, author of Ready for Anything, points out how crises typically arise because secondary priorities have been neglected. He suggests working on unfinished tasks to open up creativity.

It’s more difficult to focus on the bigger, more urgent tasks when you’re painfully aware of ongoing but necessary projects that you never seem to start, such as reorganizing files, catching up on the accounting, or updating your phone book. So set aside some time, even if it’s just an hour or two a week, to work on these longer-term but less urgent projects. Just don’t let these tasks become distractions from working on bigger picture goals.

Work when you are supposed to work!

If you want to maximize your productivity at work and balance it into the larger scheme of your life, focus is crucial. Tracy says the reason people’s lives get out of balance is not because they have too much work to do, but because they do too little work. And he means they waste too much time when they’re supposed to be working. If you have to, turn off the phone and shut down your e-mail. You’ll find the more work you do get done, the better you feel, which motivates you to keep doing more of the same. Some quick tips:

• Write out goals.

• Break down goals into actions.

• Break down these actions into bite-sized chunks.

• Schedule chunks into a planner.

• Follow through with action.

• Never give in to the temptation to do the small things first just because they’re small.

• Intersperse periods of intense work with periods of recovery, even if brief.
  

Marshall Brown, a certified career and executive coach has always had a passion for helping people find ways to live more fulfilling lives. As a coach, Brown helps individuals to find their passions and encourages them to move ahead in reaching their goals. His book, High Level Resumes, reflects his successful work with hundreds of job candidates. Reach him at marshall@mbrownassociates.com.

Ask the Coach addresses questions and concerns of assn professionals about their careers. Send your questions to marshall@mbrownassociates.com.

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