In order to determine what kind of changes I wanted to make for 2008, it was necessary for me to do some serious soul searching as to the problems I thought my life was facing.  I had a look at some other people’s thoughts on this, sat down and looked at my life.

There were a number of things I identified that I wanted to change, including my health and fitness, however perhaps the biggest roadblock in my life at the moment is the balance between work and play.  While initially I thought this was a problem with work/life balance, I realised that it wasn’t as simple as that.

As I have a full time job, a part time job and am half-way through a Masters degree, the imbalance isn’t only caused by my ‘work’.  My full time job is, in fact, very contained and while I sometimes need to complete work after hours or check those emails during my holidays, it really isn’t the cause of the imbalance.

And it isn’t the part time job either.  That is extremely variable, but also quite flexible and has been less demanding over the past year.  The postgrad study is a different matter, but also still not solely responsible for the imbalance in my life.  I study one subject per semester and can generally find enough time to complete my required activities each week.

The problem for me was a combination of longish working hours, study and a number of personal habits and hobbies that were adding no value to my life but draining significant time.

In order to gain a bit of confirmation, I used Lifehack.org’s ‘10 Questions to Ask Yourself to Regain Your Work-Life Balance’.  I identified strongly with the author when she spoke of being on the computer when her daughter needed attention, so tackled the questions with hope they might clarify my thoughts.

The questions, in and of themselves, are not difficult:

1. What is it to be completely fulfilled in life?
2. What values, qualities of being must be present for you to have a fulfilled life?
3. How would honoring those values impact your experience of work-life balance?
4. What are you committed to? (Not goals… goals are the doings that happen inside the field of commitments.)
5. What actions give you the least joy?
6. If you were committed to an organized, energetic, juicy, fulfilling experience in your work and life, how would that change your perspective about #5?
7. What two or three actions could you take right now that would create the most impact on your wellbeing?
8. What three things do you do in your daily life have absolutely no relevance to work or life fulfillment?
9. What are you willing to give up?
10. When will you commit to answering all these questions?

but answering them gave me some unexpected responses, including some serious committment to change that I hadn’t expected so early.  Perhaps the most serious of these was ‘What three things do you do in your daily life have absolutely no relevance to work or life fulfillment?’.  I had a hard time whittling this down to three, but managed to identify some things that not only add no value to my life whatsoever, but in actual fact manage to devalue my life.

Having answered the questions and identified the things I was actually committed to, I felt that I was ready to determine what the need was in my life.  That bit wasn’t so easy.

Posted by Quadrant IV under Productivity
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