In January of 2010 I took a private business retreat that quickly turned into a holistic life retreat. One idea that really came to me as I meditated was the idea “Share Life.” It seemed like such an important epiphany that I added it to my personal mission statement:

• Simplify Life
• Enjoy Life
• Purify Life
• Share Life

And so this Creating Work/Life Balance series ends not with a 50-tip list for arranging your paper clips or a post on how to increase your productivity 1,000-fold, but a simple reminder to spend time with each other.

Because if you think about it aren’t the best parts of your life – the most glorious moments, the minutes filled with ringing laughter, the deepest experiences, the most special and significant seconds – aren’t they the times when you were together with other people?

Coming to this realization has put things into perspective for me. Now, part of achieving a work-life balance is being able to work little enough so that I have time for the important people in my life. Cause that’s what its all about. Spending time in a tea party with my daughter (even when she’s too young to remember it later!) becomes more important than doing more work for work’s sake. Turning off email to spend quality time in conversation with my wife just make sense. Flexing my schedule to help out a friend in the middle of the day becomes no big deal.

Work is nice and work is great, but let’s remember what’s really important at the end of the day, week, and career. The time spent with people is what we should be working for.

Life with a Capital L

And as a Christian sharing life is more than just hanging out with others. Its sharing the Abundant Life that has been freely shared with me. Its about sharing the Truth and Love that is Life and pouring love into other people as a calling in life.

Whether you life by faith or not, we should all take time to share the life we have with those less fortunate than us – either financially, physically or emotionally. Sharing life is just as much about helping others as it is anything else.

Do this Now:

Go make an appointment right now to hang out with someone (in person) that you should spend time with.

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Or, read one of these:

1. Separate Work and Life
2. Guest Blog Post on Creating a Healthy Work/Life Balance
3. The 2011 Apt Design Ebook – Creating Work/Life Balance

Putting in 12-hour days. Constantly being stressed about work. Not being able to sleep because you’re thinking about your job. Not spending quality time with your loved ones because you’re always at the office…

No one wants to live like this. Working non-stop is not a life anyone aspires to. The problem is that kind of life can be an easy trap to fall into if you don’t have clear boundaries between your work and the rest of your life.

When you separate work and life and focus on them individually you get better focus, attention and results in each. Not only that, but people deserve a separation between you work and your life.

Customers & Clients

Your clients/customers/employer are paying you for your time, and they deserve to get what they pay for. If you are constantly letting yourself be distracted from your job by making dinner, chatting with friends, or working on your kids Halloween costume you are doing your clients/customers/employer a disservice. Actually, you’re cheating them of what they rightfully paid for.

Clients deserve to have your full attention on their project while you’re on the clock. If you work from home it helps to have a separate, specific space for work. When you’re there you’re at work and shouldn’t be disturbed. But its the same wherever you work. While you are getting paid focus on giving value to the people paying you.

Family

Your family and friends deserve for you to pay attention to them while you are with them too. Continuing to work (so easy to do now with smart phones, laptops and tablets) even while physically present doesn’t fly. It devalues the relationships of the people you’re with. When you’re with your family they deserve all of your thoughts and attention. This is a lesson Henry learned the hard way when his daughter essentially called him “Daddy Who Seems To Be Here But Actually Isn’t”.

Likewise, even being mentally distracted by work can really hinder your experience of life. Practice being present in relationships (your spouse will thank you), conversations and even menial activities. Zone in on who you’re with and what you’re doing.

You

Know who else it helps when you separate work and life? You.

You deserve to not be working all the time, you deserve to have a life too. If you constantly have work thoughts fluttering in the back of your head while  living the rest of your life – doing activities you enjoy – you are robbing those experiences of their full richness. Even if you love your job, be more than your job! Be a fuller, richer person who doesn’t always have to be thinking about one thing. Take a break, get away, relax! You can’t fully do that if you’re work-brain is always on.

Do This Now:

Tonight, spend an entire evening with your family. No work calls, emails, tweets – nothing related to your job. If you need to, schedule it with your boss or your clients – let them know you’ll be unavailable. Completely focus on your family, your friends and yourself.

Download the Wallpaper:

1900x1200

1024x768

iPhone

Or, read one of these:

1. The 2011 Apt Design Ebook – Creating Work/Life Balance
2. Share Life
3. Guest Blog Post on Creating a Healthy Work/Life Balance

But if you’ve decided you’re not going to leave, you need to find ways make your current situation better.  Here’s one simple way to help yourself enjoy your job more.

Venting

Venting is pouring out all of those feelings that have built up inside us.  Venting can be good for us sometimes – getting out a few words about your boss or coworkers is better than going postalon them. But often venting causes us to focus on the negative, work ourselves up, and get more and more angry.  Much of the time we are creating our own black hole of negativity that sucks the rest of our lives into it as well.

The Positive Vent

Try this – once a day for a week tell someone something good that happened at your job.  Replace your normal negative comments with one positive one.  And then that’s it, be done.  No ranting and raving after that. (Make it a positively-phrased comment too – not “my boss was gone” but “the office was quiet”)

It may be hard at first to even find that one thing you enjoyed.  So keep an eye open for it throughout the day.  Even better – make something good happen.  But as you focus on the good where you work you’ll soon be able to see more of it.

The great thing about finding the good is that now you have something to look forward to at work tomorrow.  True, it may not be much.  But the second day you’ll find a second thing that you liked, and another on the third.  By Friday you’ll have a small list of reasons to get up and go to work.

Try this for a week and see if it makes a difference in how you feel about your job.  Let me know in the comments how it goes!

Or, read one of these:

1. Find an Exercise You Love