Achieving Balance: Do more of what you love

photo credit: pshutterbug

How much time at work do you spend doing things that you’d do without getting paid?

After you strip away email responses, status meetings, report writing, or whatever qualifies as administrivia in your job, how often are you “in the groove”?  What percentage of time do you feel is truly value-added?  How much of your work stretches your limits?  Adds to your skill set?  Makes it worth setting your alarm every morning?

Too often we start a new job, jazzed about the company, ready to tackle challenges, only to find ourselves two or three years down the line wondering how we got where we are.  We’re transferred or promoted based on what the company needs, but not what drives us.  We get entrenched in the bureaucracy, in meeting our performance standards, in just getting things done, and don’t have the time to step back and brainstorm, create, or be strategic.

Of course, maybe you don’t want to brainstorm, create, or be strategic.

Then tell me: If you could do anything at work all day, what would it be?

Which of your tasks and responsibilities would you absolutely keep?  What would be the first to be delegated?

Don’t know?  Try this simple exercise.  For the next week, keep a piece of paper somewhere handy — next to your keyboard, in your pocket, whatever.  As you move from task to task, take a quick minute to write down the following:

1. What you did
2. How long you did it
3. How did you feel while doing it?

You can keep track of that last one with a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “I wouldn’t have taken this job if I knew I had to do this,” and 5 being “Challenging, important & fun.”

At the end of the week, look back over your notes.  How much time did you spend on tasks ranked 1 or 2?  How often did you get to do 4′s or 5′s?  Which tasks did you rank the most highly?

Then ask yourself:  Do you like what you see?

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1. Getting into alignment: Putting passion into your everyday
2. Job search over 50: Unique challenges, unique opportunities
3. Wrong job? 3 Ways to Know
4. Balance and your vacation: Don’t give up your time off
5. 5 things you can do right now to get out of your productivity hole

Tagged as: Career, Coaching, motivation, passion