Strategies For Improving Work Life Balance For High Performers

Hi, I’m Max. A professional career coach & behavioural specialist.

I have been fortunate to coach professionals at the absolute tops of their respective fields including managers at investment banks, multiple Harvard graduates and seven figure business owners. And there is a pattern that I’ve noticed with all these high performers. They often seek the absolute most of themselves in terms of their results, but they seek certainty and peace of mind. They seek to excel to the top of their fields, and they also seek to be great parents. They seek to trailblaze and innovate in their industries, but they also seek more quality time with their husband or wife. With only 24 hours in a day, today we will discuss what having both looks like. 

In my coaching practice, specifically when working on work-life balance for business elites, one of the prerequisites before we even begin our coaching relationship is to become acutely aware that your time is already being spent in a certain way – your balance between life and work is already being decided, it’s just a question of how much are you consciously deciding where it is being spent. I’d encourage you to begin reflecting on this throughout today’s reading. Another key question for today is this – what’s the balance you are ultimately seeking? This answer will be unique to you. Never forget, time is our most precious resource, it is finite and can never be recovered.

Before we dive into the actual strategy, never forget that the start of any change in our lives comes down to A STRONG ENOUGH REASON. When human beings have a strong enough reason to change something, the strategy of how to change it will become executable, but without a good enough reason, you won’t be able to create enough leverage for your strategy to hold firm.

Reason Number One – Risk Mitigation For Burnout

If you are a high performer, five questions to consider are: 

1. How long can you keep up your current way of doing things? 
2. How long can your marriage sustain itself with your current way of doing things?
3. How is your relationship with your children tracking with your current way of doing things? 
4. How is your health faring with your current way of doing things? 
5. What is your output like with your current way of doing things? 

If you’re wise enough to identify that at some stage in the future there will be a breaking point, whether that be in your productivity, your relationship, the emotional development of your children or your health, then I would strongly advise not to answer these questions with the common response – “Well I’ll just keep up my current work rate until I have to change it”. Forgive me for being direct, but this is a fairly stupid approach. And if you’re in a high pressure workplace, and you’ve been there for a sufficient amount of time, you’ve already seen people around you burn out. And the mistake all those people made was responding to the prior questions I asked with that exact response. The mistake gets made five years ago, and this lack of sustainability compounds over years until something breaks. Don’t fall into that same trap.

Reason Number Two – More Effective Decision Making

If you are a high performer, five questions to consider are:

1. Can you recall times when you’ve misspoken in a meeting?
2. Can you recall times when you’ve misspoken at home?
3. Can you recall times when you’ve mismanaged a member of your team?
4. Can you recall times when you’ve nearly blown a key sale?
5. Can you recall times when you know you haven’t shown up as your best?

If you are a high performer, you are in a position of leadership at work and in your home. And to be in a position of leadership, the livelihoods of not only your family, but the families of others depend on your decisions. An effective leader is an effective decision maker. This is crucial to understand. And the reason this is crucial is because there is a common idea amongst high performers that to allocate times of rest throughout the week is equivalent to being lazy. Nonsense. A leader who is rested will always be more fresh, alert, present, and has a greater ability to handle difficult conversations effectively, can handle pressure more effectively, and CAN LEAD MORE EFFECTIVELY. So, rather than thinking of resting as laziness, develop a more mature understanding of this. And remember we are talking about BALANCING brilliance. There is zero advocating for laziness in today’s reading.

Reason Number Three – Create A Legacy

If you are a high performer, five questions to consider are:

1. What legacy are you creating as a leader?
2. What legacy are you creating as a parent?
3. What legacy are you creating as a husband or wife?
4. What legacy are you creating as a son or daughter?
5. What legacy are you creating as a friend?

When we speak of creating legacies, notice that your life at work is only one facet of life. Now, of course the way we balance these legacies will change, but something to consider, what else is currently paying the price for you building your legacy at work?

Now that we have gone through some powerful reasons as to why Balancing Your Brilliance may be worth looking at. The good news is, the strategy and implementation is relatively straight forward. Note, strategy number three is critical, do not skip this step!

Strategy Number One – Set Intentions & Prioritise

Once you have understood what a good balance looks like in terms of daily output hours at work combined with time outside of work, one thing that will immediately become obvious is you now have less time to work. Now the trick is, do not see that as a hindrance, see this as an opportunity! For those who have read Navigating Life’s Transitions: Tips For Embracing Change it is highly recommended for today’s work. What is the opportunity for you now having less time to work? The pattern that I have noticed as a career coach is that clients actually often report back a far less significant change in their output as they first thought!

The classic 80/20 rule comes in to play here. 80 percent of the results we get in life are based on 20 percent of our actions. And the other 20 percent of our results come from the other 80 percent of our actions. And so, by setting boundaries with ourselves, it creates a pointedness in our attention. 

Develop a focus on the most critical tasks of the day, knowing that time is our most finite resource.

Strategy Number Two – Manage Your Commitments Effectively

Another key opportunity here! As talked about previously, an effective leader is an effective decision maker. So there are two things that will immediately show up once we have reduced our working hours.

The first is that much like we must focus on the key tasks, we must also focus on the key commitments – which may lead to a need to say no. So, take a look at your week, what are the 20 percent of commitments that are the most important. And develop a strategy as to how to effectively, diplomatically and assertively say no. And the second is to delegate more effectively. Again this is an opportunity! It’s an opportunity to develop accountability in your team, accountability to oneself to train your team effectively, and an opportunity to spend your time more effectively. 

Again, navigating change is important here. Do not be afraid of change. Change is the mechanism by which things grow, including business.

Strategy Number Three – Conduct A Pre-Mortem

A pre-mortem is a process by which companies can go through before a big project starts to answer the following question “If this project was a colossal failure, what are all the reasons that would happen”, and the objective of the meeting is to lay out all the potential failure points in the execution of the project, with a particular focus on failure points within the team.

So let’s ask this question, if your plan to develop more effective work life balance was a colossal failure and reading this post was a complete waste of your time, what are all the reasons why that may be?

Common answers from my clients include:

1. Something unforeseen happens at work which it normally does and I’m forced to stay.

2. I lose motivation to commit to this new balance as my habitual schedule takes over.

3. After the first challenge of executing this strategy, I see that as immediate evidence that this won’t work and I immediately revert back to my old schedule.

And by laying out all your potential failure points prior to the execution of your new balance, it will give you a strategic advantage over your own psyche, which is evolutionarily adverse to change.

If any of this resonated with you today, reach out to me for a complimentary 30 minute conversation here.

Max. Career Coach. Behavioural Specialist.