Work/Life Balance

Work Smarter, Not Harder, During the Holidays

/ Ken Blanchard

The old saying Don’t work harder, work smarter might seem like common sense, but it isn’t common practice—especially during the hectic holiday season. In addition to the year-end push for revenue goals and project completion at work, everyone’s personal time is impacted with school vacations and holiday celebrations that can result in added pressure and frenzied activity. Many people approach this season with the mindset If I put in maximum time and effort 24/7, I should be able to get it all done.

I’d like to suggest something a little different. Although it’s very tempting to tell yourself “Don’t just sit there, do something,” please consider this: “Don’t just do something, sit there!” I know it sounds counterintuitive, but let me explain how this mindset can make things easier both at work and at home.

Someone once taught me the phrase Plan your work and then work your plan. When you jump into a project without proper planning, you often make decisions without all the necessary information—which can create extra work for both you and your team. But when you take the time to think, strategize, and prioritize, you’ll actually save time, have better focus, and avoid pitfalls along the way.

At work, it’s critical to take the time to create a project plan before taking action. This will allow you to be proactive at making continuous progress toward the end goal instead of being reactive when issues come up along the way and slow you down. Without a clear plan, you have no real focus. And without focus, you might be working hard—but not smart.

At home, it’s important to get the whole family involved in creating a plan for the holidays. There’s nothing sadder than ruining your own holiday spirit because you feel like you have to do it all. You might be surprised at how much everyone would pitch in on holiday preparations if you simply asked for help. So sit down as a group and decide who is going to be involved in which project. Doing projects together—whether it’s cooking, shopping, or entertaining—adds to the positive holiday spirit. And you’ll spend more time together as a family. What’s more important than that?

I encourage you to sit down and take a few minutes right now to plan your work and personal activities for the coming month. I guarantee it will be time well spent—and you’ll enjoy the benefits of working smarter, not harder.

Enter Your Day Slowly to Lead a Balanced, Productive Life

/ Ken Blanchard / 3 Comments

Years ago I learned a very important lesson from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. He explained to me that we all have two selves. One is an external, task-oriented self that focuses on getting jobs done, while the other is an internal, thoughtful, reflective self. If we let the task-oriented self rule our lives, we might accomplish many tasks—but we won’t be leading a balanced, values-based, fulfilling life. Making more time in your day for the thoughtful self will actually help you accomplish more while reducing stress.

Think about which self wakes up in the morning. Of course, our external task-oriented self wakes up first—usually to an alarm clock. Think of what an awful term that is—an ALARM clock! My friend pastor John Ortberg thinks we should call it the opportunity clock, or the it’s going to be a great day clock. Wouldn’t that give everyone a more positive perspective and outlook?

So the alarm goes off and you leap out of bed and you’re into your task-oriented self. You’re trying to eat while you’re washing, and you’re checking your email as you get dressed. Then you jump in the car and you’re on your speaker phone while you’re driving. Next, you’re going to this meeting and that meeting and running from here to there. Finally, you get home at eight or nine at night. You’re absolutely exhausted, so when you fall into bed you don’t even have energy to say goodnight to someone who might be lying next to you. And the next morning—bang!—the alarm goes off and you’re at it again. I call that leading a busy life, but not necessarily a balanced, peaceful, or thoughtful life.

There is a way to break this cycle. We all need to find a way to enter our day slowly so that we can awaken our reflective self first thing in the morning. The way for some people to do it will be exercise, and for others reading, meditating, or journaling. I put together a booklet of favorite inspirational quotes that I read in the morning. It only takes a few minutes to read and it helps me begin my day with a positive and happy perspective. Instead of immediately doing activities I can check off a task list, I’m able to be thoughtful about how I approach each task. I can prioritize easier, be more creative, and eliminate a lot of stress this way. I even have more time for the most important activity of all—spending time with loved ones. And what’s better than that?

By entering my day slowly, I find it easier to focus on the important things and have more energy to face challenges. It has worked for me, my family, and friends—I urge you to give it a try.

The Reality of Work-Life Balance

/ Ken Blanchard / 2 Comments

Much has been written about work-life balance. Some say it is impossible to find in our fast-paced world. Others say it is achievable—but you have to work at it.

Summertime is usually the time of year when people try to concentrate a little more on work-life balance. However, I don’t see balance as just a summer project. In fact, for some people, summers can be more hectic than the rest of the year with children out of school, extended visits from family and friends, and pressure to take vacation—even as project deadlines pile up at work. This kind of schedule can turn a balanced summer into a stressful summer. But there is a way to manage all the day-to-day demands of a busy life, no matter what time of year.

Reaching balance in life is all about decreasing stress by focusing on things that create a sense of contentment. Several years ago my lovely wife, Margie, came up with PACT—an easy to remember model whose elements can help people relieve stress in their lives by achieving Perspective, Autonomy, Connectedness, and Tone.

  • Perspective is about seeing the big picture of life. If we know our purpose and direction in life, chances are we have a good perspective and daily stressors don’t get blown out of proportion. To illustrate the concept of perspective, I think about when our kids were young and we would take them to the zoo. Most parents get a little crazy chasing their kids around the zoo, but we loved it because our top priority was to have fun with the kids. We were able to overlook certain things and just enjoy the day—it was all part of our perspective. I called it zoo mentality. Honestly, it still seems strange to me that parents take their kids to the zoo then spend the whole time yelling at them. Everyone would have more fun if they embraced the perspective of zoo mentality.
  • Autonomy relates to our ability to make choices that allow us to be in control of our lives. If you have a high sense of autonomy, you are not totally controlled by your job, your spouse, your children, or anyone or anything. Of course no one can always be in complete control of every aspect of their life, but as long as your daily activities support your personal and professional goals you will have a greater sense of balance.
  • Connectedness is all about having strong positive relationships at home, at work, and in the community. Mutually supportive relationships can enhance a feeling of overall well-being and balance. Creating trusted connections at work helps improve morale and performance, while spending quality time with family and friends leads to a feeling of satisfaction of belonging to a community or being part of something bigger than yourself.
  • Tone covers how you feel about yourself physically. It includes the way you look, your health and energy level, and your level of fitness.  People with high tone generally have a high energy level, maintain a proper weight, have sound nutrition, and feel good about their physical appearance.

Margie and I have taught the PACT model for many years, and I still use it to monitor the balance in my own life. It’s a great tool that will help you not only pinpoint what’s wrong when life gets stressful, but also check off what you’re doing right when you are feeling great.

When your life is in balance, stress naturally loses its grip. Start using the PACT model this summer and keep it up all year long. You’ll live life at a higher level.

Great Leaders Open Their World

/ Ken Blanchard / 3 Comments

If you are a regular reader of my blogs, you’ll know that I’m highlighting the four major areas where great leaders need to grow continuously, taken from my new book with Mark Miller called Great Leaders Grow.  I’ve already covered the first two parts of our GROW model—Gain Knowledge and Reach Out to Others. Continue reading →

Defining Your Work/Life Balance, Part 2

/ Ken Blanchard / 1 Comment

In last week’s blog, I started telling you about an effective model you can use to achieve balance so you can enjoy your life more and resist stress.  The acronym for the PACT model stands for Perspective, Autonomy, Connectedness, and Tone. Adopting this model and putting it into practice on a daily basis is a fabulous way to keep your stress level in check and keep your work and life in balance—the ultimate goal being a happier and more peaceful day-to-day existence. Who wouldn’t want that?

We started last week with P: Perspective.  Keeping good and bad experiences in perspective can contribute greatly to a feeling of well-being and help your stress level remain low.

A: Autonomy

The next element that contributes to peak periods of happiness and high stress resistance is autonomy.  Autonomy is a feeling of having control over your own life. People with a high sense of autonomy usually have a clear sense of their own identity, feel the freedom to make choices in their lives, have career or job options and sufficient skills, and see their daily activities as moving them toward their long- and short-range goals.  If we ask individuals a single question—Are you in control of your life?—and they answer “no,” we know that those individuals are at a much higher risk for illness.

The lack of power and control felt by those who are underprivileged, really struggling to make ends meet, in a situation where there is racial or sexual discrimination occurring, or simply stretched to their limits in terms of workload, is the very opposite of autonomy and control.  People who feel powerless are under the most stress and are often the most angry.  These people often have the most severe health problems of any group in our society.

On the other hand, people who are good time managers, who feel that they are managing their daily lives well and have the skills to do it, are the ones who are likely to feel the most control and the most autonomy.  In their stories of peak periods of happiness, these people often referred to two or three weeks or a month when they were in a special place and they could decide what it was that they were going to do each day.  Others referred to a job they had or a project they were working on where they could choose the direction in which they were going and felt in control of the situation.

Clearly, most people can’t go through life on a vacation or in complete control of everything—but certainly a young mother with two toddlers running around and no money for a babysitter has a different degree of autonomy than a young mother whose youngest child has just entered the first grade. The latter may have six open hours for deciding how to spend her time. Is she going to play tennis or sleep until 10:00 a.m., take a class to further a career goal, or start a part-time job? What is her choice for today?

One of the most powerful ways to build control and choice in your life is through the development of key skills—skills like knowing how to manage others effectively, being a good parent, managing your time well, or helping people feel like they are doing their jobs well.  Again, people often have different degrees of autonomy at home and at work.  Some people do very well at the office—they set goals, hold committee meetings, participate in performance reviews, and they progress well.  At home, however, they never have time to exercise, break appointments with themselves and other family members for scheduled “quality time,” or they might have half-finished projects around the house they have been putting off for years.

C: Connectedness

The third ingredient in stress resistance and high life satisfaction is connectedness.  Connectedness relates to the quality of relationships in peoples’ lives.  People who report high connectedness often feel they have positive relationships with friends, family, self, coworkers and supervisors.  Connectedness also relates to a feeling of contentment and resonance with one’s physical environment.  You can have a highly connected experience watching a beautiful sunset or walking into a home that you’ve decorated because it feels good to you. In fact, there are good reasons for people, when they first move into a home or a new community, to spend time decorating that new environment so that they feel more connected to it. You can have a highly connected experience having a cup of coffee with a friend or sitting in bed at night cuddled up to a loved one.

My definition of low connectedness is when you do not feel you are an integral part of your environment.  For example, if you move to a new community and go away for the weekend, then return and find that nobody knows that you were gone and came back, it can be an indicator that you are not very connected to your neighborhood.  In fact, after a move most people feel totally disconnected and many people report a great deal of illness during the year following a major relocation.

In their stories of peak periods of happiness, people often referred back to a time when they were first married and didn’t have much money and so did more things at home, such as played a lot of bridge because that was all they could afford to do. Often, however, their friendships were solid and meaningful.  Men often referred back to fraternity days in college or to a high school group of friends when connections were strong and non-competitive.

All types of relationships you have affect your connectedness, but the most important relationships are those with your spouse and your boss. In fact, the number one predictor of health at the worksite is your relationship with your boss.  A bad relationship with a supervisor can make people sick.  A good relationship can enhance a feeling of overall well-being and productivity.  On the home front, are you spending quality time with your spouse?  Do you make special efforts to plan “memory-building” times together?  In general, have you spent the time that you need to nourish the most important relationships in your life?

T: Tone

The fourth element in the PACT model is tone. This important concept includes how you feel about yourself physically. This includes the way you look, your health and energy level, your sense of fitness, even the way you are dressed and the colors you are wearing.  People with high tone generally have high energy levels, maintain a proper weight, have sound nutrition and feel really good about their physical appearance.  In their stories of peak periods of happiness men very often thought back to high school or college when they were in the best shape they had ever been in—easily able to bench press 300 pounds or run several miles.  Women often talked about the time when they were 10 pounds lighter and could fit into all the clothes in their closet.  Generally both men and women talked about a time when they were active, looked good, had an abundance of energy, and paid attention to their physical health.

Over the years I’ve found that when everything else seems to be floundering and I feel my balance is slipping away, often the quickest and easiest ingredient to impact is tone.  Tone is often easiest because it lends itself better to measurement and you can see concrete results more quickly.

Balancing the Elements

What has been helpful to me about this model is that the elements of perspective, autonomy, connectedness, and tone can be a dynamic balance for one another.  As an example, what do we do in our society when someone becomes ill or injured and is hospitalized?  By definition, their physical health (tone) is low now. So what do we do? Customarily we send this person a card.  What might the card say?  We care about you (connectedness).  This won’t last forever (perspective).  Soon you’ll be up and about (tone) doing what you want to do (autonomy). We may even send flowers to help him or her connect better to a sterile hospital room.

Why I like the PACT is it helps.  It’s like a good diet.  It will work even better for you as you personalize it and make it yours.  I have used this model for many years now to keep my own life in balance and monitor the times when balance isn’t present.  If I notice I’m not looking forward to a given day or time, or I feel my energy is lagging, I try to step back and ask myself:  What’s feeling out of balance?  Am I so over-committed or over-stressed that I’m doing what everyone else wants me to do today without any time for myself?  Or am I upset about a relationship with someone close to me?  Or does my house feel untidy with lots of undone tasks and thus doesn’t provide a nourishing harbor from the stormy world?  Or have I lost track of what all my efforts are for?  Or am I confused about why I’m working 12 hours today and worked 12 hours yesterday and don’t have time to see the people I love?

The PACT model has helped me, and it can help you, identify what’s wrong when you’re feeling out of balance and pay more attention to life when you are feeling great. When your life is in balance, stress naturally loses its grip and you are able to enjoy life on a higher level.