Balance

For those who strive for a balanced life

[jamesdgutteridge]

Element 5: Personal Skills

How many hobbies do you have? And how many of those hobbies are built around certain skills that you have acquired over time or you are trying to improve over time?

By definition a hobby is “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation”. We don’t necessarily choose our hobbies. Rather they come naturally to us. They are an extension and pursuit of our interests and passions.

If you look around online (try googling “turning hobbies into skills” to start), you’ll find a number of stories about how people have turned their hobby - passion - into a skill that was relevant to their ambitions in life. For example, you could have a keen interest in technology and you have a dream of building an app that could help improve people’s lives. You may have a couple of hobbies that revolve around this passion. Maybe you read tech magazines and engage in forums every week, as well as dabble in the odd bit of coding. For now it’s just a hobby, but you’ve decided you want to focus on improving your coding skills (ideally with the aim of being able to get to a level where you can build something or at least understand what needs to be done to build the thing you want) over the next 365 days, you could significantly enhance the choices you could make in your life a year later. All the time improving your skill set and overall enjoyment of a wider range of activities.

There is a great concept that I first came across when reading a Jim Collins book. It’s the idea of proactively pursuing ‘Creative Hours’ during a 365 day period. The idea is that you aim to have completed a specified total number of Creative Hours over any given 365 day cycle. Say you want to build in 1000 Creative Hours into your life over the next 365 days. That’s 2.7 hours a day of creative ‘stuff’ - could be anything that ignites your passions (e.g. painting, writing, learning a new language, golf, endurance training etc.), but it’s also something that you want to ‘get better at’. The goal is to log these hours every day, write down what you did in the day and how much time you spent on each hobby / skill in that day and then - very importantly - rate your day on a scale of +2 (Very Happy 😀) to -2 (Not Very Happy 😔) based on how you felt about your day. By logging all of these things you can look back on your previous 365 days and determine:

Am I keeping to the 1000 hours / 365 day pace, and if not how many hours do I need to make up to get back on track by tomorrow / next week / next month?

Which days did I feel best about and what was I doing on those days so that I can plan to have more days like those in the future?

What was my ‘happiness score’ for the past year and how can I make sure I improve that this year?

Am I able to afford more time to improve new skills and/or do I want to develop the already improved skill to an even higher level? Should I / Can I increase my 1000 hour target?

I’m very excited about this feature of Balance app. It can be used to keep you on track with your personal skill development and provide prompts to tell you if you are behind on your daily target in order to keep pace with your 365 day target.

Of course, not everyone has the luxury of being able to build in creative time proactively into a life that may be taken up by work, caring for others or any number of other obligations. But there is science to back up the claims that having creative hobbies is good for you, whether it results in improving performance at work, improving physical health or reducing stress.

So why not try to build personal skill development and creative time into a balanced life?

[jamesdgutteridge]

Element 4: Health

Keeping fit and healthy both physically and mentally has become somewhat of a craze in recent years. Technology has helped spur on the frenzy, with new apps and wearables giving people reason to get up and exercise or take a moment to breathe.

The majority of people, however, do not rely on apps to get them moving. Young adults in the UK are more conscious of the benefits of a healthy diet and fitness regime due to elevated knowledge gleaned from scientific studies and the rapid spread of news on social media. There’s a reason fitness bloggers can make a living off social media - people want to be more healthy!

It’s easier said than done.

Many of us know how it feels to come back from a long day at work to then have to cook a meal that is relatively healthy and then be faced with trying to fit some exercise in.. all for that not to happen at all. You end up putting a pizza in the oven, having a glass of wine and kicking back and watching your favourite comfort TV on Netflix. No one can blame you for that, you need to switch off sometimes. Even if you fit your exercise in before work and cook your meals in advance so that you stick to a healthy diet and regulated fitness regime, you run the risk of missing out on other areas of your life, such as a meal out with friends mid-week, just because you all happen to be available and the weather is particularly good.

A healthy life is just about eating and exercising well. It’s also about making sure you take the time to allow your brain to recover from a stressful day at work or ensuring that any injuries or illnesses are seen to as a priority. It’s easy to get carried away with the day-to-day routine of life, only to find yourself suffering further down the line.

Having the time to keep on top of everything in your life is hard, but your health should always come first.

So, when it comes to leading a balanced life, you cannot start without making sure your health is in a good place. Rather than creating time to fit your health routines in to your calendar, you should start with it. Work around your health. Think about the all inclusive meaning of what it is to be healthy. Your fitness, diet, mental health and physical health.

Rather than spending hours each week organising this into your diary, I would like to use technology as an enabler toward a more balanced life. More on this next week, and a final short form post on the 5th and final element of a balanced life, Personal Skills, in a couple of days.

[jamesdgutteridge]

Element 3: Finances

Where all 5 elements of a balanced life lurk in the back of our minds, some of them can surface their heads more often - and some heads are uglier than others.

Keeping your finances in check while maintaining a balanced social life can be one of life’s harder tasks.

How many times have you woken up on a Sunday with a fear of checking your bank account?

It’s not just your social life that bears the brunt of your financial dilemmas. If you are leading a balanced life it’s likely that you’ll be saving money for other experiences, whether that be a holiday, learning a new skill or gym classes. Many of us will have some long-term financial goals that can sometimes be hard to keep track of, especially when the sun is out all summer and your friends are finding every excuse to get to the beer garden.

There are a number of apps out there that help you budget and keep track of savings. I’ve tried them all, literally. Having settled on one for now, I have come to realise that each one is good for a specific job - keeping track of your spending. Great. But what about seeing how the management of your spending and saving is impacting the other parts of your life? If you zoom out a bit, you can look at finances in much the same way as the other elements of a balanced life. You have goals for spending in categories such as groceries, travel and eating out and you may well build up saving ‘pots’ for holidays or a rainy day. Hitting these goals is pretty black and white. You either do or you don’t. But are you able to hit those goals as well as balance your relationships so that you are seeing the important people in your life as much as you want to each month? Or, if you look at my upcoming posts on Health and Personal Skill Development, are you achieving what you want across your life with your current saving and spending goals.

Sometimes financial worries can take up the majority of our thoughts, especially in London, given the cost of living and the price of eating or drinking out. We spend hours upon hours worrying and trying to get through to pay-day. Not everyone is like this, but the point is to be able to understand how your broader life and sense of balance fits alongside your spending and saving habits. In order to make the right adjustments for yourself, you would be better off looking at the broader spectrum and understanding how you can maintain a sense of balance when doing so.

Rather than build another budgeting app, I wanted to build something for myself that would fit into the 5 element balance. So, when I’m on track with my savings goals every month and spending under my budgets, I can actually see that my finances are on track (filling up 100% of their 20% share of the pie chart). This allows me to switch extra focus to the elements that might be slightly out of balance. Imagine a pie chart that shifts day-by-day relative to the monthly targets you have set yourself across all 5 elements. If you are off target you’d get a prompt to let you know that you are doing ok with your finances, but you should maybe book in some time with your brother this weekend, because you are two hours behind your target time spent with him this month. 

I’ll start to show you this as a tool in action over the coming weeks and months and let you know how it’s helping me maintain a balance in my life.

[jamesdgutteridge]

Element 2: Work

When it comes to the modern day young adult, work is often the biggest part of life.

Most of our waking hours are taken up by our job and we often find ourselves defining who we are by what our occupation is. Work-life balance has become a popular topic for ‘self help’ books and lifestyle blogs in recent years and the dangers of an unhealthy balance have been spread across social media and the news. There are serious long-term health and social issues attributed to stress at work and longer office hours that cause you to sacrifice a good nights sleep and down-time with your loved ones.

So, why don’t we do a quick review of how your work goals are fitting in to your life as a whole?

Everyone sets themselves different goals at work. Most people have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) assigned to them by their managers and they use these as a way of tracking if they are achieving success at work. However, progress at work can come in different forms. You may love the company you work for and are happy in your current role, with a track record of achieving well above your KPIs. Instead of sitting comfortable, there are goals outside of those KPIs that could help you grow further: 

Promotion

Pay Rise

Subject Matter Learning

Charitable Activities

Becoming a mentor or coach / Improving Leadership Skills

Others may not love their current job and may feel more restless about their job security and the effect that will have on their life. They will likely be setting goals that move them on to the next chapter in their career:

Training for a career / profession change

Interview practice

Networking

Applying to new jobs

Revision of their CV

Whatever your job situation, whether it takes up most of your daily thoughts or it is simply something that provides an income for you to live the rest of your life, it is right to make sure you are getting the right work-life balance for you.

An example might be a lawyer, who works long hours and has unpredictable workloads day-by-day, which can sometimes give rise to stress and cancelled evening plans. However, this individual might be happy to sacrifice some social and health aspects of their life, because they have financial security, enjoy their job (on the whole) and they are trying to establish themselves for long-term success at their firm. This person would have a long list of goals and tasks in the Work element of their life compared to maybe Relationships and Health.

The point here is to make sure there are at least some goals set in the other elements of their life. These must be achievable and manageable, given their focus on work. While they may put a 75% emphasis of their sense of balance on their work and a 25% emphasis on the other 4 elements, another person might put a 30% emphasis on their work and larger emphasis on their Personal Skill Development and Relationships outside of work.

It is still possible to feel a sense of balance across all 5 elements of a balanced life if you are delivering on your goals, as long as you have a realistic expectation of what they are for each part of your life. As mentioned in my previous post, we will start to look at tools to track these goals and keep pace with your sense of balance next week.

[jamesdgutteridge]

Element 1: Relationships

How would you respond to the following?

Name the five most important people to you in your life.

The majority of us answer with Mum, Dad, Sibling(s), Best friend(s), Grandparent(s) etc. These are the people who make our lives richer and form a vital and substantial part of who we are. Our values, interests and a sense of belonging are all, in-part, attributed to these individuals. Some people may have 10 or even more people they would count as important to them. Some may have a handful. If you were no longer able to spend time with these people, it would significantly impact your wellbeing. Of course, not being able to see family members might impact you more than not being able to spend time with friends and vice-versa. There may be friends who you hold dear because your friendship goes way back to when you were young, but you end every year saying “I need to make more time for them in my life this year”.

How would you respond to the following?

Rate the quality of the time you spent over the past month with those important people. (Out of 10)

Surprisingly, when reflecting on this statement a significant number of us hesitate to give tens across the board. We often feel like we could be doing more with our loved ones. Maybe work got in the way this month, or you spent too much time prioritising your gym routine on a Sunday morning when you could have taken a friend out to brunch, or you avoided brunch because you couldn’t afford it (how about cooking brunch together instead?).

Finally, if you were to set a target number of quality hours to spend with each important individual in your life for the next month, what would that look like?

Let’s say your important people are your Mum, Dad, Brother, other half, your friend Tom, your friend Chris and your childhood friend, who you don’t see so much anymore but would like to work on spending more time with. You’ve decided that you want to maximise the potential of these relationships every month from now on. The reason for this is because you know the benefits of making sure these relationships are as strong as they can be for your own wellbeing and sense of balance in your life (and theirs!). So, you set the following hour goals for yourself:

Mum: 16 hours per month

Dad: 16 hours per month

Brother: 16 hours per month

Other Half: 45 hours per month

Tom: 10 hours per month

Chris: 10 hours per month

Childhood Friend: 5 hours per month

With these goals set, you plan ahead in your diary and get in touch with each person to organise quality time with them. You block out your diary so that the target number of hours are accounted for. Once you’ve finished the month you reflect on the time you had with them and make adjustments as to whether you made the most of that time so that you can try to improve next month.

You can track this in something like Excel or your Calendar app. As we go through the other elements it becomes obvious that tracking these individually can be disjointed and time consuming, and sometimes it’s not always about the hours you’re spending with someone that counts, it can also be about the things you do and share with them. Next week, we’ll have a look at a model that tracks this and keeps you on pace with your goals within each element.

[jamesdgutteridge]

Have spent my Sunday morning building 3 layers of data models for #balanceapp. Thanks to my parents for providing a comfortable working environment 😅 also, 1st of 5 blogposts for this week coming up later tonight 📱 #balancedlife #relationships #health #finances #personalskills #work #worklifebalance #goalsetting #goals (at Woldingham) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2bkr4RAGJy/?igshid=r2t14lg2gv39

[jamesdgutteridge]

I’m building an app.. all by myself 😯 it’s a way out from launch, but I have started a blog and you’ll likely see more posts about it in the near future. Check out the link in my bio for content on what this app will do! #balance #balanceapp #balancedlife #personalskills #relationships #worklifebalance #finances #personalfinance #health #fitness (at Planet Earth) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2WR6q-Ah8X/?igshid=h8mxiwpzg2sx

[jamesdgutteridge]

Five Elements that make up a Balanced Life

Life throws something at us every second. From my experience, this only gets worse as you get older. However, the truth is that the average individual, of any age, anywhere in the world, has more on their plate than 50 years ago. There is simply more 'stuff' to do in the world now and the barriers to entry are much lower given today's technology. You might have read articles or books about the 'Information Age' that list the benefits and the dangers of too much information in our lives. We often think of this information as being contained to certain areas of our life, such as our jobs, our finances or our health and fitness regimes. For example, if you were to look on your phone's app store right now, you could find thousands of health and fitness apps, but could you tell which one is for you? What are the opportunity costs of taking up one scheme vs another?

What we often don't think about is the effect this choice has on other areas of your life and how it will fit into the balance of your day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month and year-to-year.

If you think back, you might be able to recall the times in your life when you felt you had a perfect balance. These usually feel like effortless periods in time, where you are achieving your goals in work or in school but also have a healthy social, financial and health situation. It's great to keep these memories and feelings available in order to help you work back to this, but it's likely that you felt this at a time when the pressures of life weren't as great as they've now become.

I can remember a time when I was sailing through life, with a feeling of complete balance and growth everyday. What I didn't realise was just how difficult it would be to achieve this balance as I shaped a life for myself beyond school and university. Luckily, I was given some sound advice by a teacher at the school I was attending. 

My teacher would regularly ask me how I felt, on a scale of 1-10, about 5 areas of my life. These were:

Home life / family

School work

Extracurricular school activities

Social life

Personal skill development

He'd then pick on the ones that were lagging behind others. For example, if I ranked School Work an 8/10, but Family life a 5/10, he'd ask why that was the case. He then sent me away and asked me to work at it harder, but keep my eye on the ball in the other areas, so that they didn't slip. I'd go home and be conscious of making the most of my time with my family. The next time I spoke to my teacher I'd respond with higher rankings across the board, but he'd still give me tasks to do in each. Before long, this review of my 'world' became second nature to me and it lead me to great success, but, most importantly, a sense of happiness and calm throughout the school years that followed.

Fast forward to 2019 and I'm 6 years into a career, renting in London, juggling time with family and friends, pushing myself to achieve more at work, managing finances well and then not so well and trying to get to the gym enough so that I can fill each corner of that sense of balance.

This is hard.

And oftentimes I'll end the month feeling slightly off-balance, as if I've forgotten to do something, or see someone, or save that extra bit of money, or skipped too many days in the gym.

This is common, and my housemate, my friends, colleagues and family all voice the same frustrations.

So, how do you make sure you're not neglecting spending time with your sibling / Mum / Dad, while also making sure that you're not spending too much time with them that it's impacting your work or your time with other important friends. 

I've adapted the model I was taught at school to fit the life of the modern day adult (Me) to include these 5 elements:

Relationships

Work

Finances

Health

Personal Skill Development

This is a snapshot of a pie chart I use in Excel. It tracks the hours I'm spending with the important people in my life, the time I'm putting into developing new personal skills (like learning to code, or learning a new language), the number of workouts I'm completing per week, my tasks towards achieving my next work goal and my financial targets. If any of those are lagging behind their set targets, then the pie chart will start to skew and I know I've got to put more time and effort into that area of my life.

For example, I could set a target of spending 10 quality hours in the month with my brother and 2 hours per day on practicing coding. If I’m lagging behind, or over doing it, it’ll skew the chart. The idea is to keep it as balanced as possible - as this signifies you’re on target in each area of your life. 

In my next posts, I will explore each of these elements in more detail and look at examples of how to set and track your goals based on time spent on each one.

[jamesdgutteridge]

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein, in a letter to his son Eduard, February 5, 1930

[jamesdgutteridge]

Balance Blog

If you find it hard to maintain a healthy balance in your life, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in the majority, and in this era of information overload it can be hard to decipher what to do next. Should you see your friend for dinner or should you be saving that money? What if you don’t see them for another month? What if that turns into a year? What effect will that have on your sense of balance in your life?

This blog is where we will look at the life of a young adult who is trying to fill larger shoes while keeping their balance as they make their first strides into the ‘real’ world.