We talked briefly a while back about the Agile software development idea. Turns out, work/life balance is implicitly part of the Agile principles:

Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Obviously if your people are burning out due to lack of rest and personal time, that’s not sustainable. I see this over and over again: project managers who relax by drinking too much after work, developers who take up smoking, everybody just not getting enough sleep and becoming frustrated.

So a big part of Agile methodology is pacing. In Scrum (one kind of Agile implementation) you estimate the effort that goes into each task, and schedule only the tasks that will actually fit within a “sprint” of two to four weeks’ duration. And you adjust the estimates as you go along so work time becomes a constant (more or less) but the schedule adapts to reality.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but maintaining a work/life energy balance is kind of essential.

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Second, I like your focus on focus. Keeping the big goals in mind provides a reason to say no to too much activity, provides a way to prioritize and provides some peace of mind.

But having it all? No way – something’s gotta give. Let’s recognize that each decision point contributes to one goal or another. If I attend a client dinner I miss eating with my family. If I attend a school event I miss something at the office. Those choices can be perfectly fine, think them through with your significant others and work out the details. But if I stay late at work too often, then get home late then gotta scramble in the evening, then it’s hard to get to sleep on time, then wake up cranked for the next work challenges, it goes on and on. And over time it wears us down, we get sick, we get stresses, we forget what’s important in life. That slow slide happens to too many of us. When you’re making your daily and weekly and yearly priority list make sure you “program” down time, a strictly no-meeting, no-email time, when you can call your partner, go for a walk, eat breakfast (in your car doesn’t count), breath deeply, and in general calm down. If you don’t think you can do that where you are then change where you are, ’cause you’re headed for a heart attack.

Getting things done, making my priorities get in line, having good meetings or good financials or good professional outcomes still may not make it a “good day” for me. I’ve changed perspectives over time (goodness knows we are not getting any younger). Clicking on the web photo album with pics of my children and grandson, that makes me happy. Doing things for my partner, watching out for a neighbor, helping someone with something mundane, that makes me happy. There is still ambition and the desire to be economically sound, professionally advanced, and have a good time at work. But there is not the illusion that all is attainable.

I’d like to hear more about how you and your firm and collegues keep work life balance. Take care, and come visit CA sometime, we really know how to relax!