Temporary Imbalance

Photo by Shawn P Thomas

I haven’t had much balance in my life lately. It’s pretty much been “all writing all the time,” in order to get my book done and meet my publisher’s deadlines. And when I wasn’t writing, I was doing my best to keep up with my clients and the rest of my business.

My personal life, and even other parts of my business, have definitely suffered. But as a student of productivity, I have come to realize that “temporary imbalance” is ok. The definition of “productive” that guides my work is, “achieving a significant result.”

Can balance and productivity co-exist? Sure, sometimes. But there are other times when achieving that significant result is pretty consuming.

In order to assess whether your imbalance is temporary, ask yourself if you can define the point at which you’ll go back to “normal” – when you expect that your life will not be dominated by one area or project. And when you get to that point when you expected things to go back to normal, stop and ask yourself if you really are making time for other parts of your life, or if that one all-consuming project has just been replaced by the next all-consuming project, and therefore you are still out of balance.

I’m excited that after this week, the hardest and most time-consuming parts of writing my book will be over.  It will be off to the publisher, and I’ll just have to approve the production version, where I’m really not supposed to change anything but the most glaring errors/omissions/problems. I keep saying that after this week, “I’ll get my life back.”  I have many things I’ve been wanting to do in other parts of my life that I look forward to pursuing later this month. Whether or not I get to those will determine whether my imbalance was really temporary.  I’ll keep you posted! =)