Balance, Burn It In or Burn Out

I thought this message by Tim Braheem, CEO of Performance Experts was worth sharing.


Balance, Burn It In or Burn Out –
In the past fifteen years as a business consultant, public speaker and a coach, the number one area that I am asked about is life balance. It makes sense really. Work is where we spend more of our waking hours than anywhere else and as a result, it has a propensity to shift the scales of life too heavily to one side, throwing us into a state that we refer to as “Out of Balance”.

Recently, I surveyed a large list of potential coaching clients and in excess of 80% of those surveyed rated their relationship with themselves as poor. When asking that same group to rate their satisfaction with the amount of time that they spend doing things that they love, a similar result was produced.

In the hectic and achievement based society of the United States, life can at times feel as if its slipping away as we tackle our list of tasks. Many of you may feel as if you’re on a treadmill and you can’t find the stop button. Burnout, stress and depression are three of the great causes of disease and divorce, much less lack of productivity in the workplace.

In his timeless classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey shares, “The key is not to prioritize what you schedule, it’s to schedule your priorities.”

This simple sentence provides us with a big step in the direction of life balance. To go a bit deeper, I suggest that you define the “Non-Negotiables” of your personal life. By non-negotiable, I mean those relationships, hobbies and desires that you feel you deserve to nurture and cultivate in your life. What I see most often from those that feel they are out of balance, is a failure to isolate these areas and make them a non-negotiable priority in their life. Instead of scheduling their priorities, many of us try to “Fit Them In” when we have room. The problem is often that we don’t have room and even if we do, we’re too wiped out from reacting to life to take advantage of it.

Once you have come up with your list, my next suggestion is to “Burn Them In” to your schedule. From there, life needs to work its way in around your non-negotiables.

As an example if you don’t feel like you spend enough time with your children, then I suggest that you schedule it into your calendar to have a “Mommy Day” or a “Daddy Day” once a month where you take them to the park or to play miniature golf, or the beach. When you schedule it, you will have a much higher probability of getting done. Another example may be that you don’t feel that you have enough time to work on your relationship with yourself. If you love nature, then make a non-negotiable commitment to yourself that one morning a week you’re going to schedule to wake up one hour earlier and go for a morning hike or walk in the park.

Remember, if you wait for your schedule to open up for these important desires of life, it just might not. Burn it in or burn yourself out.



To your success,



Tim Braheem