Taking A Page Out of My Own Book - Finding Balance

I actually wrote an article about finding balance in perspective and approach as it pertains to English language learning.

You need to be balanced in how you view communication.

You need to be balanced in how you attempt to learn to communicate.

You need to balance between your listening, speaking, reading, writing, and nonverbal cues. All of it is important to becoming an effective communicator.

And, in this identification that balance in needed in English language learning, it forced me to think about balance in my own life, and in my own work.

And, ultimately, whether I had balance and the effects of that balance/imbalance on my productivity.

And my conclusion was that I am not balanced.

After returning from vacation, I feel like I’m in catch-up mode. That I have so many things I need to do, to wrap up, to start. I have a long long list of things I want to do or that I aspired to start. And yet, I find that I haven’t achieved them.

And I think that it, in part, stems from me not having balance.

After writing a whole article of the importance of balance in English language learning, the importance of putting yourself in situations to communicate in English about things that are interesting and that you are passionate about so that you remain motivated and see the functional growth and benefit , I think it was necessary to admit to myself that I also need to apply that advice about balance to myself.

So something I’m going to try to do is balance my daily goals.

I’ve decided to put constraints on my choice of goals daily and balancing them between professional, personal, domesticated, and artistic. When I decide what I am going to prioritize and focus my attention on, I am only allowed to target one of each type of goal daily.

I find that if allowed to think intellectually about it, I choose professional goals consistently. I constantly prioritize professional goals. What this means is that I am not designing my life balanced and what I think is happening is it is making me regret, neglect, or dislike my professional aspirations, which ultimately sabotages my own professional endeavours. If I come to dislike those goals, how can I expect that put my 100% into them or enjoy the process, or seek to do them more?

I think it becomes more clear that I would choose to laze about, waste my time with doom-scrolling or surfing reddit.

And so we’re going to try it out.

I don’t think I have any big a-ha moments to share at this point or any revelatory achievements, but I do think that deliberately announcing my intention is extremely effective in keeping me accountable and also conscious of these patterns and courses of action to deal with these problems.

By intentionally providing restrictions and constraints on the types of goals I can target each day, I can ensure that I approach my daily designed schedules with balance built in. This will hopefully foster fun, varied, and engaging goals that keep me motivated, energized and eager. And hopefully that then translates to persistence and consistency in my goal achievement, actual completion of those goals, and more rapid completion overall.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress!