Finding Balance Amongst The Chaos
What do you need in your day-to-day life to maintain balance? What is balance? How do you know when you have achieved balance? Can you measure balance?
All really great questions. Thinking deeper about balance is not something I have really done, like ever. For the sake of this post I am going to do just that. Try to dig into balance a bit. What it is, what it means to me and some ways I know I am ‘in balance.’
What is balance? Google the definition of balance and you are presented with a number of explanations.
Here is one I like:
balance: a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.
The key word here is: proportion.
The thing with balance is, it’s unique. Your balance is not my balance and vice versa. You cannt project your own balance on others and I cannot project my balane on you.
Balance for me is
1) A healthy dose of working really hard every day to learn, grow and progress towards my professional goals and aspirations. For this I have dedicated time. My 8,9,10 hours daily of consistent and focused work. I’m a naturally ambitious person and even though the world has and is going through a crisis I still beleive there is a massive amount of opportunity to do well not just for ourselves but for others.
2) A triple shot of family time. Quite frankly, the most important thing to me is the health and wellbeing of my family. Spending time with them skiing and snowboarding, doing puzzles, playing board games and watching movies are some of our favorite activities as of late.
3) Honest to goodness progress towards the key skills, goals, aspirations and knowledge that are most important to me right now. This could be something infosec related like my plans to work on the CISSP/CISA/CRISC certifications or it could be related to my goal of reading 12 books this year. Which, by the way, I am on target for completing 2 books just in January alone so i’m happy with my progress on this front so far this year.
4) Time for me, time for escapism. This comes in the form of watching Macguyvery (The remake. Yeah I know. :) ) This also comes in the form of watching some of my favorite streamers. I am also cheating a bit because this times into #2, but, time for snowboarding, either by myself or with my kids.
Now regarding this list, for me this is in no particular order because to be honest, some days any one of these can be more important than the others. That’s the key to balance for me. Remaining fluid and allowing my priorities to change as I need them to.
How do I know if I am in balance? I honestly have no idea how to measure balance or how to even know when you have struck some sort of magic equilibrium between all of the “balls” we all juggle constantly.
I can say though, the days where I am the happiest and the most fulfilled, are the days where I
a) Make progress on my goals and aspirations b) Have amazing moments with my family c) Have time to decompress and unwind
The days where I do not make any progress (or I feel like I don’t) towards my goals and aspirations. The days where my family is moving 1,000 mph and the house is just ‘crazy’ or we’re just all in separate books let alone not even on the same page. Parents you know what I mean. The days where I have no time to decompress and unwind. Those are the days that I can feel the unbalance and the chaos.
My goal is to limit those days to hours or minutes. The more we are able to find balance, the more we will feel fulfilled and happy. The more we are happy the better off we will all be.
What do you do to stay in balance? Let me know on LinkedIn.