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Don’t let your work push your life aside
By Barbara Poole
Contributing Writer
Mike is a 46-year-old advertising executive with a high-pressure job in the city.
His day begins at around 6 a.m. with a quick shower and shave, after which he checks his e-mail to make sure he hasn’t missed anything critical during the night.
Armed with pager, cell phone, Blackberry, notebook, The Wall Street Journal and a cup of black coffee, he air-kisses his wife and kids goodbye as he races out the door to begin the morning commute.
After finally finding a parking space, he makes a mad dash to his office to grab some files for the 8 a.m. meeting that is just getting underway. Four meetings and countless interruptions later, he notices his stomach is grumbling and remembers he forgot to scarf down his usual bagel with all that coffee.
Not to worry. He’s meeting his partner for lunch in a half-hour to review the final draft of a big proposal before they send it out to a client.
When he returns from lunch to the office, he has 18 voice mail messages waiting for him, including one from his wife reminding him that their son David’s little league game is at 7:30 p.m. Mike glances at his watch and smiles as he challenges himself to play beat the clock so that he can get out of the office in time to make David’s game.
At 7:15 p.m., Mike is stuck in late rush hour traffic cursing the road construction and blocked lanes that have slowed the exodus from the city to a standstill. He decides to take an alternate route, drives a half-mile down the shoulder of the road to the next exit and peels off the highway to find a shortcut through several residential neighborhoods.
When he finally makes it to the baseball field, the game is in the fourth inning and David’s team is up by three. They win the game, and the family decides to go for pizza on the way home.
While waiting for their order, Mike pulls out his cell phone to call the office and make sure the proposal went out as planned.
He gets paged twice on the way home, once by his partner who wants to discuss strategy for the next morning’s meeting and once by a client who wants to know why their commercial didn’t show up on prime time.
After returning the calls at home, he finally collapses into the bed around
10 p.m. knowing he will wake up in the middle of the night to do some planning for the next day.
What makes Mike’s situation so amazing is that if you ask him how life is going for him, he’ll tell you everything is great. He has a job he loves, a beautiful wife and kids, and plenty of money in the bank.
What he won’t tell you, and maybe won’t tell himself, is that those middle of the night bouts with insomnia are increasing, his stomach is churning regularly, and he’s had to cancel his last three racquetball games because of business commitments.
Mike is out of balance, but he refuses to acknowledge it.
It is as if he has a big “S” across his chest that he believes allows him to burn the candle at both ends without having to pay the price.
Do you see some of Mike in your own behavior?
Sometimes the value we place on being productive and taking care of business develops a life of its own.
Ask yourself the following questions:
• Do you frequently find yourself multi-tasking, doing several things at once without really experiencing or enjoying any of them?
• Do you play beat the clock throughout the day, racing from one thing to the next with no reserves of time?
• Are you experiencing any physical symptoms indicative of stress, such as headaches, insomnia, gastro-intestinal disturbances, muscle tension, etc.?
• Can you relax, sit back and do nothing, or do you find yourself getting fidgety and antsy when you try to relax?
• When was the last time you experienced pure, unadulterated, childlike joy?
If the Type-A rat race is taking its toll, the first thing to do is give yourself permission to be honest about how you are feeling.
Then take a look at what you can let go of and where you can re-order your priorities.
Acknowledging that you want to have a life while you’re busy having a career doesn’t mean you’re weak, and it might be the first step to getting a life that works for you.
As Gandhi once said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
Barbara Poole is a leadership and career development coach with Success Builders Inc. E-mail her at CoachBarbara@SuccessBuildersInc.com.
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