I thought my family commitments, hectic meeting schedules and limited time for a break were unique. I was messaged by someone on Facebook in response to something I posted earlier that (previous) day.
Seeing the list of about eight people in the AEST time zone and active at 2am made me think they were up because of any one of the following reasons:
• They were lying in bed using Facebook.
• Couldn't sleep due to insomnia.
• Overworking beyond reasonable hours.
• On a trip, abroad with family or on business.
• Making up lost time during the day.
The first three I immediately saw being a health issue needing some intervention. The last two I saw as having the right focus and being in better control of a hectic lifestyle. I found whilst messaging my friend at that time in the morning, that they were making up for lost time during the day.
Both of us knew it was affecting our sleep patterns and we weren't getting enough rest. Now I'm no doctor, but most of us know some of our work behavior and family commitments pull us into all sorts of directions and imbalance. But ask yourself are you happy with imbalance? If you are, then great but be prepared for something failing!
I see my life being full of imbalance but I'm happy. I do need to take care of my health being in my mid-40s, overweight and building a business. So, small changes, and putting them into my daily routine are important and my mountain to climb (or die on). I don’t want to see something fail when there's so much going on.
I've been lucky enough to have a comfortable home and lifestyle, loving family and the changes whilst difficult to keep in my routine, I do need to make them. So, I've been thinking about what needs to counterbalance what I am doing.
A few things are already in place. I decided a few months ago, business is going well and I need to involve others to do some of the work.
Every entrepreneur is unique and irreplaceable, but by splitting their knowledge and activity across 15-20 tasks undertaken, the workload and responsibility can be shared with others.
So that’s the hard work for me now, defining processes that then need to be documented, setting expectations and training staff.
This is not a trivial exercise at the same time as running our operation. Helen Sweeney is one of my producers and she shared with me something she read on the key attributes of someone with influence. I thought it strange at the time, but one of the those was being able to take 10 weeks off and still have the business running smoothly.
I took it as a wake-up call. Recently, I'd heard from a very successful family business that the founders (parents) of the current management team believed they had in fact failed.
They saw their children working harder than they did when they started the business. So, whilst they were highly successful, they didn’t make a sustainable business for the family to have better balance.
My "10-week holiday" is now my destination and the journey has started. My hopes and targets are in line with keeping the fine balance on maintaining cashflow, improving my health and future scalability of my business (without me being everywhere).
At the same time, we're doing a lot of pro-bono work in the community. Our success has come as a direct result of the wonderful people supporting others in need. They are our advocates and are leading us into new opportunities.
In a few months, I'll post an update on how things are going with improving my imbalances in life. In the meantime, continue to work on your own overall busy-ness in your life – in areas of business/work, family and the broader community.
Adjust your imbalance by seeing what action needs to counterbalance, before you start to fail. If you're a super hero, remember we need you!
Hardeep Girn is managing director Know My Group; a marketing and sales organisation that uses business relationships, PR and media to introduce new opportunities. Serving any size of business and across most industries, the brands in the Group are Know My Business, Know My Life and newly formed Know My Health. Get in touch to see how we can help you position your company to get introduced to new opportunity. Call 1300 046 876 or email sales@knowmygroup.com
