Balancing Work & Life

When you are multifaceted, the amount of work, responsibilities, and priorities you have can become infinite. You may also experience random bursts of motivation towards a specific project that leave you staying up late working through your excitement. If this sounds like an experience you have had, you may be wondering how to create more balance in your work and life during these periods or in general. 

As the Multifaceted Black Guide, I want to provide you with some ways to work on creating a harmonious balance in your life based on my knowledge and personal experiences. These include making decisions rooted in your values, not getting on your phone first thing in the morning, and choosing discipline over inconsistency.

Values-Based Decision Making

My top 3 values are family, freedom, and faith. When I am approached with opportunities or decisions that need to be made I remember my values and choose accordingly. 

After graduating with my Bachelor’s Degree, I had two options to choose from: a salaried insurance job 7 hours away from my family or a multifaceted Master’s Degree back at home. Obviously when it came to family I leaned towards the degree, but when it came to freedom the insurance job would provide me the financial freedom I desired. The last value, faith, became the final deciding factor. I chose to have faith in the financial stability coming back ten-fold, especially since I know how short life can be.

This translates to working long nights because of a burst of energy or even taking on an extra client no matter your current load.

First Action in the Morning

When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first thing that you do? If you said check your phone, then this suggestion is for you. 

Consider replacing your phone with something that brings you peace and can start your day off right. Whether this is journaling, reading a book, stretching, or even bible study. Starting your day off right will allow you to feel better and make caring for your well-being an integrated part of your day rather than a chore.

Life is more than social media, emails, texts, and calls. Your health is wealth. Remember to take care of yourself and pour into you, so that you are able to overflow onto others!

Discipline Over Inconsistency

As a multifaceted creative coming up with a new idea or starting on a new hobby, I get enthralled and motivated to fast track its path from ideation to reality. Although getting it done quick allows me to get feedback and kinks out sooner, 12-24 hour turn arounds may be a little too quick. Staying up all night and looking at the screen until your eyes hurt shows excitement, but if its something you are only doing when you’re motivated, you are missing out on the true fast track to success: discipline. 

Although powerful our brains do not operate at their full potential for hours and hours on end. This can lead to the content you worked on till midnight having a gradual decrease in quality leaving you with mistakes to clean up the next day. All of this can be avoided with the discipline to establish a cutoff time, take breaks, and show up even when you aren’t motivated.

So tell me, have you been balancing work and life or will these help you start to?