6 minute read
Fit, Not Balance
Article
P.J. Caposey
Fit, Not Balance
There is no shortage of tips, tricks, techniques, and hacks to help people from all walks of life, including educators, managing their time to find balance. There are two major problems with that sentence, however.
First, you have to embrace the fact that there is no such thing as time management. We all have the same 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 52 weeks in a year to get things done. Time is fixed. Time is not malleable. Time is not manageable. We simply shy away from a term like self-management because it is more personal and invasive. But it is true, and vernacular matters.
So, you have to think of it not as time management, but as self-management. As humans, we control our behavior and choices when it comes to work completion, prioritization, and efficiency. This has nothing to do with attempting to control the uncontrollable construct that is time—it only has to deal with us controlling ourselves.
Second, the concept of work-life balance is simply flawed. When I ask people what they visualize when they hear the term work-life balance most people either say the scales of justice or a teeter-totter. The issue is that when we attempt to stack work on one side of those implements and the rest of our life on the
other we are NEVER going to be able to maintain balance.
I encourage people to abandon the concept of work-life balance and to adopt the mindset of work-life fit. If you
are going to visualize this, think of your life as a puzzle. The majority of people have some combination of up to 7 (not necessarily all) of these key elements of life they are trying to squeeze together. These elements include: • Family • Friends • Fitness • Faith • Profession • Personal Hobbies • “Side Hustles”
The most successful people I know have abandoned their desire to find balance and have driven hard to find how these core elements fit together for them to live their happiest, most efficient and effective lives.
So, if you have been trying to find balance in your life and continually set this as a goal only to let yourself down, I strongly recommend you take the following practical tips to move toward that end.
PRIORITIES
Your first mindset shift is to be honest with yourself. Are you working toward
the life you imagined? Said differently, if I asked you what the most important legacy you want to leave in life is, is that dominating how you spend your energy and effort? If that answer for you is that you want to be the best possible parent, then measure your dedication to that goal.
Having this honest conversation with yourself is vital because, if you don’t, no matter how many time management tips and techniques you deploy, you will just fill the new time found by your efficiencies with other stuff. Said plainly—you cannot out efficiency a lack of priorities.
If you have this internal dialogue and come up with your priority, then I ask you to take a 60 day challenge. I sincerely believe that we can all carve out one hour in the day. What would happen for you if you gave yourself 60 minutes for 60 days. I bet you would move closer to your goals
and create more happiness than you have been able to create in your circle of sameness you have been living in.
REMOVE GUILT
Your next mindset shift is to be deeply honest with the ones you love, and expect honesty in return. Are you burdened by enormous and unnecessary guilt? Through radical candor, you can move forward and eliminate the monkey on your back. When my oldest boys were
10- and 11-years old, I asked them what it would take for me to be a good dad. I was shrouded in guilt over traveling the country to speak, consult, and follow my professional dreams, and I worried about what they might say.
They thought about it, and a few weeks later they came back to me with their wish list. They wanted me to coach their sports when possible, take them to breakfast once a week, and play more video games with them. I double checked. I asked about the times I was gone for multiple nights in a row. They indicated they were so busy and so loved by the other adults in their lives that it had no impact on their happiness or their thoughts on my parenting. This lifted a 1,000-pound weight from my shoulders. It was exponentially simpler than I was making it.
I then had a similar, but different, talk with my wife, articulating what it was that I cared about as her partner. To her surprise, what I wanted from her was considerably less than what she had assigned herself. The same unassigned guilt I had been burdened with was weighing down my wife. It was not until I
had the mindset shift to embrace radical honesty that we were able to identify and address these issues.
I share these two personal stories to articulate the point that most likely you have assigned yourself tasks, responsibilities, and, most important, guilt in areas that nobody else has. This guilt pulls in multiple directions, kills our joy, and creates a logjam of priorities that need not exist. 10 minutes of courage can create countless hours of peace-ofmind if we are brave enough to engage.
ENGAGE YOUR EGO
Ego has a connotation of hubris or arrogance. Ego in its simplest form means sense of self. The truth is that ego forces
far more of us to play small than to play big. I love to use the example of thinking back to our single days and whether or not we were willing to approach someone we found attractive at a social gathering. If the answer is no—that was your ego and your fear of rejection making that decision.
How does this fit into time management and work-life fit? That is simple— everything that we want is on the other side of fear. Many people are so afraid of their own ambition that they will not even share their wildest and craziest goals with the people that they love the most.
We must work on our ego so that if we pursue our goals and succeed or if we pursue them and fail, when we wake up the next morning we still feel the same way about ourselves. Too often, our egos are forcing us to play small and without honoring our innate ambition (think Maslow’s self-actualization) to be the best possible version of ourselves. We avoid this because the fear of failure outweighs the desire to succeed. If we are going to find a true work-life FIT—we must engage our egos in the process. PJ Caposey is an award winning educator who has been recognized for his work as a teacher, principal, and superintendent. He is also a best-selling author and has written 8 books for various publishers. His work and commentary has been featured on sites such as the Washington Post, NPR, CBS This Morning, ASCD, Edutopia, the Huffington Post, and was featured in a Global Leaders Forum thinkpiece alongside the likes of General Petraeus and General McChrystal. He works in the Education Department of three universities, including within the Ivy League, and in a myriad of capacities with the Illinois Principal’ Association including Principal Coach and author of the first complete stack of MicroCredentials offered in Illinois. Additionally, PJ is a sought after keynote presenter, consultant, and provider of professional development and has recently keynoted several national conferences specializing in time management, the tyranny of the status quo, school culture, continuous improvement, social media, and teacher evaluation. He lives in Northwest Illinois with his wife, who is also an educator, and their four children.
