Writing for life

“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 14/01/2008

Where did 2007 go? I know it’s a dreadful cliché, but the years really do seem to be flying by more quickly, and, worryingly, it’s a phenomenon that’s only accelerating as I get older. Children, of course, have a lot to do with that: there’s always something they need mum or dad for – and unlike work, you can’t clock off at the end of the day, you can’t take holidays, you can’t have sick days: you’re on call, 24/7/365. But hey, they’re more than worth it… right?

Next to children the single biggest factor dominating most working parents’ lives is their jobs (and for a few sorry souls the job even pips the kids to the top spot). We spend an extraordinary amount of our time at work. For many of us, in any given week, the lions share of our waking hours will be spent at work. It’s only natural, then, that pressures and frustrations from work will spill over and influence other areas of our lives.

What’s important is that we keep these things in perspective.

Because we spend so much of our time and energy on our work, it’s all too easy for it to dominate our lives. There’s a very real danger that we’ll attribute greater significance to its role in our overall wellbeing than other aspects of our lives that take up less of our time, but are in reality so much more important to us. The result is potentially messy.

We start to think that if we could just get on top of things at work, if we could excel, then everything else in our life will naturally fall into place. So we channel more of our effort, energy and time into work, and less on the other areas of our lives that are important for our overall happiness: things like our personal relationships, family life, and our personal goals and ambitions.

What happens then? Well, things may initially look good at work. You may well achieve more in the short term, but will it make you happy? Of course not. By neglecting the things that are really important to you and focusing on work, you find that other aspects of your life lacking. While things are looking rosy at work, your overall quality of life is taking a nose dive.

How do many of us respond in this sort of situation? We throw ourselves into our work with renewed vigour… which of course just compounds the problem.

From a career perspective this is bad news. While at first you’ll achieve more at work, ultimately it’s unsustainable. By not paying enough attention to the things that are really important to you in life, you’re on a downward spiral that will leave you unhappy and unfulfilled. Ultimately that has to impact the quality of your work.

It’s important to find balance – to figure out what’s really important to you, and to consciously give those things enough of your attention. At the start of a new year we naturally tend to take stock of our lives. There’s no better time to refocus our priorities, so this new year why not make a resolution to get clear about what’s really important in your life, and to give those things the attention they deserve.