Page 60 - Free Yourself From

Balancing Your Work and Life 43

One Sunday morning, I came into my office, sat down at my desk,
and started pulling files I wanted to work on out of a drawer—my
usual routine. Suddenly I asked myself, why am I doing this? There
was nothing that couldn’t wait until Monday morning. I could be play-
ing tennis or going to my favorite church service—things I once
enjoyed doing on the weekend—and yet I chose to come into work.
I realized that coming into the office to stay on top of things was
something I needed to do to get SHAMBAUGH up and running. But
now, the business was doing very well and it didn’t need that all-out
effort from me. At some point, I began coming in on the weekends
for the sake of coming in. I was on autopilot, and in a bit of a rut. I
couldn’t recall having a personal life, so I knew I must have been sab-
otaging it. Sitting at the desk and thinking it all through, I realized
that working for the sake of working probably wasn’t good for me.
And if it wasn’t good for me, it probably wasn’t good for the busi-
ness that relied on me either.
It was time for me to reprioritize and channel some time back into
the things in my personal life that I valued. I scheduled in time for
my Sunday morning church service and called up my tennis friends
to get back on their roster. And when family or friends asked me to
take a trip with them, I went—reclaiming an enjoyable thing that I
had given up for some time.
I learned from that experience that it is important to step back
periodically and checkin on yourself. How are you conducting your
life, where is your time and effort taking you, and does it make sense?
There are times when we need to put an all-out effort into our job
or career or personal development, or our family, such as that period
when I was trying to start my company. But when it crosses the line
from being an episode in your life to being your everyday norm, that’s
when life swings out of balance.
Avoiding imbalance and burnout is another way of keeping our
eye on the big picture, pacing ourselves, and making sure we’re