Does Work-life Balance & Success Have a Point of Diminishing Return?

There are many ways to become overwhelmed in this world, and finding work-life balance and greater success are two of them. Dana shows us a mind trick to managing our energy and reducing our sense of overwhelm. – InPower Editors

It’s summer! Which for many of us means juggling work and various forms of fun (i.e., family, vacations, weekend trips etc.) Work-life balance? Ha! Summer is one of those times when I begin to feel – for myself and my clients – that “success” often comes with a personal price tag. I’m not talking about the price the greedy people pay in the movies. I’m talking about the slow stretch of trying to do and be more on a larger stage in your career when you also want to build stronger and deeper relationships and experiences in your life.

Sometimes if financial wealth is part of your total success you can “buy your way out” of certain types of stress, but frankly that can create new kinds of stress (money takes energy to manage!). And you can’t buy your way out of everything you want to do, like taking a true vacation, where you actually put email away. Most of what you want to do requires that you DO it!

When you’re in the middle of feeling this stretch, it can feel like success has a diminishing point of return; the more you succeed, the less you like your life. Ultimately something has to give.

This is what made me go into business for myself. I had achieved most of the success I wanted, good job, great house lovely family… and I wasn’t enjoying any of it enough, or giving my family the attention it deserved. So I changed the rules.

That strategy worked for a while, but again, when I started having success with my own business, I felt the stretch again! This time I didn’t change the rules; I changed myself. I found new tools and let go of old beliefs that were making it impossible to do it all the way I wanted.

“Holding space” for something is an energy overhead cost, even when I’m not focused on it in real-time! via @DanaTheus” – Click to Tweet

One of the biggest beliefs I had to shift was about my personal scope of competence in any given moment. I had reached the limits of multi-tasking effectiveness and – more importantly – discovered that while I’m “holding space” for something, it’s taking energy away from many other things – even when I’m not focused on it! This was like “energy overhead cost” that had little return.

What does “holding space” mean and why was it costing me energy? I found that when I had a big presentation coming up, even while I was cooking dinner or having a meeting about a totally difference subject, part of my mind was “holding space” for the presentation. It was reserving some energy that I’d need to prepare and give the presentation. It was thinking about what I would say. It was working on it even when I was consciously focused on other things. And as more and more of these projects piled up, I became more and more exhausted and found it harder and harder to be present with what was in front of me.

That’s when I discovered the InPower Boundaries tool, which is a simple mindfulness process to stop holding space for stuff and focus. It increased my personal productivity and enjoyment of my life immensely. I can still find myself holding space for too many things at once, but InPower Boundaries help me remain focused even during when that happens.

Lesson learned: Work takes effort. Success takes energy. via @DanaTheus” – Click to Tweet

Here’s the secret to success I’ve learned. Work takes effort. Success takes energy.

And energy requires a different kind of management than effort. You don’t have to reach the point of diminishing returns if you learn to manage your energy well.