work/work balance

I’ve been thinking recently about balance.  My normal stance on this subject is about trying not to compromise too much in life generally and very big on achieving work/life balance (which I’ve blogged about before here and here).  I now find myself wondering how you can find balance in your job itself (whether or not you are a Planner or other agency type person).

John Steel spoke in his APG ‘Perfect Pitch’ speech in 2007 about the need to defend Thinking Time (even if that means booking in your diary a Very Important Meeting with Me, Myself & I).  Getting a balance between Thinking and Doing is always going to be hard when deadlines are looming and requests are stacking up, but particularly for insight or strategy related work, the more time (within reason) spent on the Thinking bit, the better the likely outcome of the Doing.

There’s also a need to find a balance between the Stuff I Have To Do and Stuff I Want To Do, as well as Stuff I Hate, Stuff I Don’t Mind Doing and Stuff I Really Enjoy.

Succeeding in achieving this balance could in part be down to the instigation of a really good To Do List (or a really good PA for those of you higher up the organisational chart), but I suspect that achieving a good work/work balance might have more to do with the position of your specialism in your organisation, work load, company culture and, most importantly, the sheer bloody mindedness of the particular individual.