BLT: How happy are you with your work:life balance?
This fortnight’s BLT (*) topic for discussion was ‘Work:Life balance’ facilitated by Helen Isacke from Trusted Coach Directory
“For me, it’s more of a work:death balance” (from a will writer)
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Introductions and brain loosener: How would you sum up your own work:life balance?
“Work is part of my life”
“It’s really a work:life inbalance – you work unsociable hours…but you don’t really mind as you choose the unsociable hours to work”
“You do it for yourself – work is part of life”
2. The Wheel of Life – Finding your own balance
www.mindtools.com/rs/LifeWheel
This is a tried and trusted coaching tool; to take a ‘helicopter view’ in order to identify the time you spend on core activities (referred to here as ‘dimensions’) and your satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with that allocation of time.
Here’s how it works – you choose the 6-8 ‘dimensions’ (the spokes radiating out from the centre on your Wheel) which are important to you and mark yourself from 1 (very unhappy) to 10 (very happy) on these ‘dimensions’ to see how ‘well balanced’ your wheel appears.
Group feedback from the exercise:
- Define your outputs – because we all chose our own ‘dimensions’, everybody’s Wheel is different. The point is to identify and make changes (where necessary) to certain aspects of YOUR life, not somebody else’s.
- What question am I answering? – is it how satisfied we are with the results or with the time we allocate to obtain those results? Essentially, the two are linked but it important to be specific in the questions we ask ourselves.
- Partner feedback – are we often not the best of our own time allocation or perceived satisfaction; having somebody who knows you well to fill out the Wheel on your behalf would present a more dispassionate view of your strengths/weaknesses.
- One year on – it would be useful to look at your wheel at regular intervals to see how your priorities have changed.
- Negative bias – the group tended to lead with their lowest scores first (dissatisfaction) rather than their highest scores – do we take enough time to pat ourselves on the back for what we do well?
3. Newsworthy corner
i. Kop Hill Climb, Sat 16th Sep – David Banes is on the organising committee
http://www.kophillclimb.org.uk
£10 in advance (£15 on the day)
ii. Careers Day – for Bucks school children
THURSDAY 12th OCTOBER AT ADAMS PARK HIGH WYCOMBE
SATURDAY 14th OCTOBER AT THE GATEWAY AYLESBURY
Schools – book your FREE places for the Thursday event:
simon@dutyofcareconsultancy.co.uk
iii. SEM Rush
An all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals, including competitive intelligence
tony.thornby@living-streams.co.uk
iv. Laptop Monday, Mon 18th Sep – location details to be forwarded upon request from mark@enterprisedoctor.co.uk
(*) BLT is a free fortnightly networking group that meets from 7:15-8:45, every other Thursday at The George & Dragon, Marlow.
For more details, please leave me a message – new networkers are always welcome.
The next meeting is Thursday 28th September 2017
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