The Art of Unplugging: Finding Balance in the Hustle

I come from a family of hustlers and hard workers. And it’s easy for me to embrace the hustle and bustle of the holiday season that we are currently in, but also just hustle culture in general.

I have a hard time fully unplugging and I have a hard time celebrating all that I’ve accomplished too. I’ve noticed this tendency in my family as well. None of us is great at setting boundaries or clear guardrails around our work, and it’s not uncommon for us to go on vacation and one or all of us to be working at some point during the week.

Now part of that is, it just feels better when you come back to work if you have kept up along the way, and sometimes it can’t be helped. But I’ve noticed that it can be a habit - something we’re doing on autopilot. In some ways, I think that we are guilty of mistaking activity for achievement on occasion (pardon the summarization of John Wooden’s words there)...and I think too, the “busy-ness” or activity sometimes helps us ignore the more important things for ourselves, or even avoid being with ourselves as well.

One thing that has helped me to unplug or to find a way to balance my life a little is to label my time - some is “on stage” time - where I’m on and in front of people - client calls, coaching, client facilitation, workshops, things like that. Sometimes I am backstage - where I’m behind the scenes working on some things for the future, planning for the onstage time, or attending to administrative needs or even some life stuff. And then I have my “offstage” time - where I’m not working, this is my fun time, or my family time. These times do ebb and flow, and even when I’m offstage, I may shift to backstage on occasion - this is either because my subconscious brain has come up with an idea or solution and I need to tap into that energy, or maybe it’s just checking in on/responding to emails, or maybe taking some time to learn something new that will help me.

By labeling my time, and intentionally building in “off-stage” time, I can then either sprint with my “onstage” time if needed, or go heavy on that for a bit, while planning for some backstage and much needed offstage time. It allows me to build a life and career where I’m paying attention not just to my work, but to my own personal needs and life as well - and helps make sure that I am attending to those things that are most important to me - both onstage and off.

So, I’m getting ready to go into some offstage and backstage time. This has been intentionally planned after a good amount of onstage time. I’m looking forward to learning, to building some new things for my business, to connecting with family and friends in my offstage time and to just moving a little slower in this time as well. 

How do you think about your time? Do you consider how you allocate your time and how you make sure that you are getting some offstage time, particularly if you’ve needed to be onstage for a while? 

I encourage you to consider this approach to thinking about your time so that you can make time for the things that are most important to you - in any season.