We live in an age where our lives get easily packed with activity. If we’re not careful, we spend too much time on activities that don’t really matter and neglect the truly important things in life.
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This month’s questioner asks,
How do you balance your life well? You’re in school, a dad, a husband, involved with your church et cetera. Sometimes I find I don’t really know how to do life well when I have various roles to fill.
Ironically, I don’t feel like I balance life that well.
I too often take on more projects and commit to more activities than I have time for. Or, if I’m not over committing, I’m getting too easily distracted. There have been many projects left half-finished and many days where something temporal took more attention than something important.
And, interestingly, if you are asking this question, you probably balance life better than you realize. When life is extremely out of balance, it usually is because it doesn’t feel out of balance. Asking questions like this indicates that you are intentional about keeping the main thing the main thing. That’s a good place to be.
I think it’s easier for me to write this article in light of what I have learned through failure rather than success. There is much I have still to learn about balancing life well, but I’ve noticed some trends pop up when life feels most out of balance for me. I’ll share with you a few of the things I’ve discovered about myself that keep me from living a balanced life, and hopefully you can find it helpful in your pursuit of living a balanced life.
1. Life feels most out of balance when I’ve forgotten that time is a commodity.
I never thought about time in the same terms as I thought about money until I started having children and began losing hours in my day not because I “wasted” them, but because someone else needed them.
We only have a certain allotted amount of time each day—twenty-four hours, to be exact. We have one hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week. Focusing on one activity means we are choosing not to focus on other activities.
When I forget this and say “Yes” to a project when my schedule is already full, something is going to get neglected. Unfortunately, it’s often something important.
My wife and I are smack in the middle of raising four children. I am also in the middle of a Bachelor of Biblical Studies degree and working my way through college. When I forget that time is a commodity and fail to budget it proportionately, things go haywire in a hurry.
Trying to be present and engaged with my family plus study and work fulltime doesn’t give a lot of space for watching movies and social media. So during semesters, I limit media to weekends and figure out which assignments carry the most weight and seem most beneficial for my studies and focus on doing those. This means I miss out on a lot of entertainment, and I don’t have the best grades in my class. But because time is a commodity, this is the only way I know how to get the most out of studying while raising a family.
2. I struggle to know where to focus my attention when I have lost sight of my purpose in life.
I have found that I waste the most time in the seasons of life where I am not certain about my purpose. There are many good and profitable things I could give my attention to, but unless I am convinced it is what I am made to do, it’s difficult to focus my attention on them.
There have been several times where I panicked about how little money we had to live on and I took on my projects than I actually had time for. I would soon find it impossible to keep up with my studies without neglecting family.
For this season of life, the work God has put before me requires us to be willing to live on less. When I am centered in the purpose God has given my wife and I, the anxiety eases and I have more time to focus on the important things in life.
3. I fail to attend to the things I don’t schedule.
One of the goals I have for each month is to facilitate Daddy and Mommy dates with each of our children. It’s also one of the easiest to neglect to schedule before the month begins. Our children thrive on these times, and in all honesty, it provides opportunities for my wife and I to slow down and rest a little.
But because our family can function just fine without them, and because we always have bills to pay, homework that’s due, or messes to clean up, we can be two weeks into a month before penciling in the dates. Sadly, that is sometimes already too late.
To help with this, my wife and I try to take at least thirty minutes every week to review the last week’s activities and plan for the next week’s activities. It’s best if we can take a couple of hours to do this and reconnect again with our purpose and goals for life, our family, and the various works we are involved in. The reality is, however, there are many weeks where something comes up and we are not able to devote a full two hours to this process. But even taking a few minutes to get clear on the what the most important things are for the coming week can help us maintain a healthy outlook on our schedule(s) and live a more properly balanced life.
I have found it helpful to have a good planner if I want to develop good rhythms for reviewing and planning my schedule.
I’ve been using the Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt for the last four years and love it. What I really like about the planner is it gives me one place to document goals, the year’s calendar events, and plan each day. It also has worked into it periods for reviewing and planning with helpful questions to ponder as I reflect on the last week or quarter and look forward to the next. When I actively use the Full Focus Planner, I live with greater clarity and peace about where to focus my attention.
Bonus: Ignoring my limitations leads me to set unrealistic expectations.
Jesus had the audacity to say His yoke was “easy” and burden “light” (See Mt. 11:28-30). Seriously? Why do I feel so overwhelmed all the time? Why do I wonder so often whether I am enough or do doing anything worthwhile?
I’ve been learning that my feelings of worthlessness or inadequacies often come from cultural expectations around me. America is driven to accomplish more and make a significant difference in our world. I can so quickly fall into this drive be great. That means hustle, and sacrifice, right?
God designed creation with built-in limitations. I think He did this to force us to confront our unhealthy tendencies to live independently from Him. When we learn to accept our limitations and live within them, we automatically feel more balanced. It’s kind of simple yet has been life-changing for me.
This has impacted two main areas of my life: sleep and my task list.
I used to cut into my sleep if I had more to do. Instead of saying “no” to projects, I’d wake up earlier or stay up later. About four years ago, I began noticing I couldn’t wake up as early as I used to. I felt I was getting lazy or something. But no matter how many manipulation techniques I tried to trick my brain into waking up early again, I couldn’t. It culminated several months ago when I began feeling my body physically breakdown. I struggled to focus. My back, which already had issues, felt even worse. And when I would try to sleep, I found it difficult.
This began to mess with me mentally. At first, I wasn’t sure what was happening until I began learning more about how much our bodies need sleep. When I get solid nights of sleep, I am more cheerful, more well-balanced, and have a fresher mind and body. This allows me to better discern what activities are important to focus on.
I also used to pack my day full with tasks, but I’d never get all of them done.
I’d schedule a week to be productive, only to get to the end having not completed even half the list.
Productivity gurus talk about how the brain can really only focus on about three main things each day. Michael Hyatt in his Full Focus Planner takes that principle and extrapolates it out to the week. He calls it “The Big 3.” Instead of trying to accomplish all the things I have on my to-do list in a week, I’ve learned to select the three specific tasks that absolutely must get done for the week and schedule my days to work at those. If I have time to fit something else in I can. If not, that’s fine.
This eases the tension in my mind when I’m failing to “get everything done.” It also helps me remember that I am a finite human being and encourages me to figure out what is truly important in life and set realistic expectations about it.
Along with maintaining good sleep habits, I have found that focusing on only three main tasks in a week helps me live a more well-balanced life.
Now, I am completing this article later then I had hoped—about a week later. Clearly, my life is not perfectly balanced. But then again, maybe part of living a “well-balanced” life is becoming okay with the fact that life is not perfect. Not even our schedules. I am not more loved or more disliked by Father God depending on how well I balance my life. Neither are you.
Even so, we do long to be faithful. We want to be faithful to our loved-ones and faithful in the life’s work God has put before us. Hopefully, these few lessons from some of my failures can help you live more faithfully. My life gets most out of balance when I forget that time is a commodity, what my purpose is, to schedule the important things, and what my limitations are.
What causes your life to get out of balance? You can share in the comments below.
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