Today I’d like to share an insecurity I’ve had that came to a tipping point yesterday – and how I discovered that I was worrying unnecessarily. It started last Thursday at work. In an effort to be proactive, I notified a colleague about an external proposal I wanted to submit – the deadline was getting close and I’d need this person’s approval before I could move forward. They promptly reminded me that our internal deadline for such things is two weeks ahead of the real due date, which had already passed! Imagine the feeling I went into this exchange with (“wow they’re going to love me, I am so on top of things that I’m giving people heads up super early!”) versus how I felt after that response. Just like that, I went from being ahead of the game, to being seriously behind and needing to ask for a favor.
Life is All About Balance
TL;DR – I’m busy balancing huge commitments, I took a few paragraphs to describe what it looks like for me to balance them, and you can scroll down to the next heading.
One of my core values is striking a balance between my various passions. There are two images that you’ll see on my website and profiles, and one of them is a picture of me with a statement about balance. In a world that glorifies overwork (“hustle,” “grind,” and “dedication”), I strive to leave room for everything that matters to me. Here’s a short list of roles I’ve been giving my attention to lately (not complete, but these are the most time-consuming aspects of my identity right now):
- Dad
- Husband
- Professor
- Small Business Owner
- Rock Climber
What’s it look like for me to balance these things? Establishing sacred time in my schedule for each is the key. I cannot work late because if I get home after dinner time I won’t see my kids that day. I can’t work weekends because I’d have to actively ignore my kids while I’m home. I could try and steal nap time on the weekends, but that would rob my partner of some of the most important time we have together each week. The same goes for picking up work after the kids go to bed – that’s time for my wife.
Setting aside this time for them is just the beginning. If I’m worrying about work, or even just churning an idea over in my head, I’m not fully present. More than once, my kids have done something hilarious (or brilliant, or sweet, or cute) and I’ve missed it even though I’m staring right at them.
With the responsibility of these two monsters, it can be difficult to keep time and energy separate just for my relationship with my spouse. “Us time” only happens when the kids are asleep, which is also when we’re at our lowest energy state and wanting to relax before they wake up and we start the circus all over again. We’re tinkering here, and I have to say that spending time on the patio instead of the couch has been a game changer.
Turn this on its head, and you’ll see how I treat my primary job of being a professor. When I’m at work, I must focus on the tasks that others value most – my boss values me engaging with the university community and proposing new teaching grants to support improvement efforts. Neither of these activities get my primary job of teaching classes done, so I must protect some time for them. My students (the people I view as my true boss) value things like timely feedback, and I must protect time for that as well. I can’t be worrying about my family when I am supposed to be writing a lesson plan (yes, some faculty actually do that).
It moves slow, but I do own a business called the Intentional Academy. This blog is one aspect of it. I’ve been developing this dream since 2016, and we’re about to actually launch our very first product for sale. Balance for this looks like waking up at 4:30am every day and putting in 2 hours before any of my other commitments wake up. This is the 218th blog post at TonyFerrar.com, and I’ve never written one when the sun is up.
Rock climbing is my hobby. I think hobbies are under-valued, often relegated to the position of being last on our priority lists. Sure, if it came to it I would choose my family over climbing. But we often have an unhealthy idea of what that means. Any minute that I give to climbing could have been given to work. Or to my kids. Does that mean I am choosing climbing over them? Of course not. To make it work, I have to give it a genuine time commitment. I go to the gym about 6 hours a week, and try to take a day a week to go climb on the real rocks now that I live so close to them (often on a weekday to avoid crowds and align with partners’ schedules).
Weren’t you talking about an insecurity?
TL;DR: When balancing commitments looks like working a flexible schedule, it can appear as though you’re just not working. I worry about that false perception whenever someone wishes I got something done for them sooner. Scroll to the next heading.
Yep, thanks for bringing me back to my point. When you’re new in an organization (I just started my job 3 months ago) it’s important to establish your professional identity. My new colleagues really don’t know what to make of me (or at least they didn’t). They see me leaving promptly at 5pm while they sit there working late. They don’t see me taking 30 minute coffee breaks to chit chat. They see me coming in closer to 11am on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I was at the gym. They see me not showing up at all some days because I went rock climbing.
Imagine my insecurity if I don’t finish a task that someone needs completed. They see my flexible schedule, but do they see me working at 5am to make up for it? Of course not. They see me stubbornly refuse to check email in the evenings and weekends. But do they see me move work tasks into those times if I took an extra hour during the day to be with my kids? Nope.
As you know, I don’t live a very private life. You can pretty much watch everything that I do in my SnapStory. I don’t think many of my coworkers do, but plenty of my students follow along. They know if I took a Tuesday off to go climbing. But even they can’t see the ways that I move things around to serve them to make up for it.
Imagine my insecurity if I don’t get an assignment graded quickly. Or if I can’t meet someone for office hours at a time that works for them. I’m constantly worried that by sharing my balanced life with them, I’m giving folks ammo – “why didn’t you meet with me to help on my homework? Oh, because you’re too busy rock climbing instead of doing your job.”
How’d you get that proposal done?
TL;DR: I had to move a lot around on a weekend to make time to work on this thing. People were flexible with me and the job got done. Feel free to scroll to the next heading.
Back to the proposal story. In order to work things out, I had to get my boss to ask for an exception to the deadline (I hate asking for exceptions, and hate it even more if I have to get someone else to do it for me). Next, I had to allocate significant time to writing over the weekend (and not just any weekend, a holiday weekend when we had family visiting from thousands of miles away). Lastly, I had to ask my boss to work over the weekend, because he had to review the document before I submitted it too.
First, I put down the Intentional Academy work that I normally do in the early morning and gave that time to the proposal project instead. Next, I asked my wife to buy me an extra hour or two in the mornings after spending time with the kids when they first woke up (my favorite time with them). I skipped a climbing gym session on Sunday, pushed some work that I had planned for Monday morning, and I got the proposal done. I sent it to my boss Sunday morning and told him he could review it at his convenience – I’d set aside time early Monday to incorporate his feedback.
Result: the proposal got done, though my heart rate was a bit higher than usual.
Didn’t you say you were worrying unnecessarily?
Yep. I think you can see an important point now: because I focus so heavily on balancing my commitments, if something gets moved around many other people are affected. This one instance affected:
- Me
- My boss
- Our grants coordinator – I didn’t even mention that she’s been responding to email at all hours of the day for me!
- My wife
- My kids
- My family visiting from out of town
- The Intentional Academy
I expected every one of them to express some flavor of disappointment in me. Or worse, to suggest that I am over-committed and not getting my job done (“maybe you should climb less, or stop with this Intentional Academy thing because clearly you’re not meeting your most important obligations”).
Not one person did. In fact, they all jumped to help out by offering to take over some of my other responsibilities during this time. My family helped out with things around the house. They kept the kids occupied while I wrote. My boss responded to my messages over the weekend almost instantly. Everyone was pretty cool about it, saying things like “you’re working so hard” and “you’re so productive”!
Conclusion
There are two types of balance: static and dynamic. Imagine for a moment that you’re trying to stand a pencil on its pointy end. There is a theoretical position that, if you can perfectly reach it, the pencil will never fall over. That’s static balance. The problem is that it’s almost impossible to reach, and the tiniest perturbation will knock it over (don’t sneeze).
Dynamic balance involves making adjustments to keep the balance. You never get to relax completely, but the pencil never falls over either. I think this is a much more sustainable image for life.
A few weeks ago, my boss was working on a proposal and he needed me to review it over the weekend. I could have said “that’s family time, I refuse” and he would have had no recourse. I didn’t. I made a few adjustments, got the work done, and reduced his stress level a bit. A few weeks later, he got to repay the favor (though that’s not why I did it).
So, wrapping up the insecurity: I was very worried about the misperception that I’m not working enough because people don’t always see when I work, but they usually do see when I play. The reality is we’re all living together in a state of dynamic balance. Cultivating an attitude of “others-mindedness” buys you the flexibility to commit to the things that matter most. Sometimes you’re the giver. Sometimes you’re the receiver.
This time, I received. Thanks everyone for your flexibility and kindness!
