Have you ever just looked at a word for long enough until it starts to look weird, like almost misspelt? That’s how I felt when I started writing this piece. People always throw that balance word at me like “ETP how do you balance xyz?”, and quite frankly I can’t say I know per say. I used to say, time management and stuff, but mennn sometimes life gets super super fast and it’s like all your commitments are demanding for your attention all at once so you feel choked – with extra pressure on your jugular veins.
However this post, is going to be me trying to properly define how to “balance” – note, this isn’t necessarily everything I do, but it’s what would be the ideal thing to do (though we all know ideal situations don’t always work out that way, but hey, it’s the thought that counts).
Alright! Enough perambulating let’s get down to it:
1. PRIORITIZATION
Don’t think all my topics will be in capital letters – this is just really important in the list of things that help people balance. So yes, your priorities are number one! Listen, if you want to get a lot of things done the first thing to do is arrange them in order of importance. The importance could be based on deadlines, how it affects your day to day life, whether other issues are tagged to it – whatever it is, learn to set priorities. I don’t only mean in big decisions, I mean even in deciding your outfit for the next day – is comfort your utmost priority or do you have someone to impress as the ultimate priority? Everything needs priority assessment; when you are used to doing it in your “little” decisions it will only be natural to continue doing so with major decisions.
2. Do things you actually like.
This may look like a “duh” point, but for real, having a passion for whatever it is you do will make you go the extra mile for it. Like blogging for me, I genuinely enjoy doing it so even when my day-to-day life is getting really hectic, I foresee such occurrences and have posts written down in advance. A certain extent of passion is needed to make you leave your comfort zone to do something until that thing becomes a part of your comfort zone.
3. Remember why you decided to do what it is you do.
“Remember who you are” – Mufasa, The Lion King. This is a quote from one of my all time favourite animated movies and I feel it’s so applicable in this point. Sometimes I find myself so tired; after a long day I can then have 3 meetings in 5 hours as part of my commitments to different organizations and I feel like arghhh lol. It’s the reason why I signed up for each of them that makes me forfeit my meal/rest time to attend to each one with my full concentration, as well as remembering their quota in my long term goal – which is very, very ambitious. There’s no point doing something just for doing sake – as my dad regularly says, “What is worth doing is worth doing well”.
I hope my pointers have helped a little with the search for “balance” – as I said, these are applicable to ideal situations so they may not all work for you, but it’s worth a try!
Till next time,
ETP xo
(Originally written for www.Pendical.com, check them out!)