Everyone you love will die someday. It’s an inevitable truth, but one you probably don’t dwell on often.
But what if you knew how many times you would see your loved ones before they die? A looming countdown ticking closer to your last moment together would likely inspire you to stay a little longer during visits and stop ignoring phone calls after a long week at work.
Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, a social media management system, wrote a post about work-life balance after visiting a website that estimates how many times you’ll see your parents before they pass away.
The website, See Your Folks, takes information about where you live, your parents ages and how many times you see them a year. The premise of the site is not to depress you, but to inspire you to make the most of your time and create a balanced life.
The site estimates Ryan has 252 more visits with his parents.
Even if that number ends up being way off, it brings a serious dose of perspective.
How many hours do you spend at work or school? How many hours are spent in your car each week? Are you so tired during your free time that you don’t even enjoy it?
There is no magical solution to figuring out a healthy work-life balance, but there is one simple way to improve it:
Never stop asking questions. That’s it. You’ll never get to the right answer if you don’t start with a question.
If you’re offered a promotion that will add a couple of hours to your commute, ask yourself if the opportunity is worth taking hours away from your family time. If you decide to go back to school, ask yourself how many hours you are willing to commit each week before designing your class schedule.
Question what each choice will entail, how it will impact other areas of your life and why you think it is important.
Remember, work-life balance isn’t just about major decisions. It’s also about the little things, the behaviors that often go unnoticed, like time spent on social media or checking your phone.
Here’s an exercise to assess your current work-life balance:
- Start by creating broad categories for the areas of your life. You can make it as simple as “work” and “home” or get more specific with categories like “family,” “friends,” “alone time” and “chores/errands.”
- Decide how much time you would ideally like to spend in each area. This doesn’t have to be exact, but an estimate of how many hours you would devote to each category in a perfect world.
- Spend a week taking stock of all of your daily activities, no matter how small. Write down what you are spending your time on and how much time each activity takes.
- At the end of the week, place each activity into the category that best fits it and add up how much time you spent on each.
- Study the results, keeping in mind your mood during different points of the week. Compare the list of your real-time activities to your “perfect world” list.
After completing the exercise, start asking the tough questions. Are you making the most of your time or wasting precious hours on things that aren’t meaningful?
If work is your top priority, are you putting in the hours needed to take it to the next level? If family is your focus, how much quality time did you spend with them? Are you engaged with what you are doing or just going through the motions?
Time commitment comes into play with all kinds of decisions. For example, should you get your education on campus or online? Should you should take the leap and become your own boss? Should you start watching the latest sitcom?
Most importantly, if you don’t like how your time is being spent, figure out what you need to change to make it better.
Be honest and keep questioning. You might not achieve the perfect work-life balance, but you should get a lot closer.
Erin Palmer is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and websites, including The Chicago Tribune and The Huffington Post. Erin’s “See Your Folks” number was 164, which inspired her to write this post and commit to improving her own work-life balance.
