My wife and I and our three sons visited a gift shop recently and the boys couldn’t resist buying their mum a porcelain mug with the inscription:
‘Mothers of little boys work from son up to son down’
It struck me that an appropriate mug for most dads might read:
‘Fathers of little boys work from before son up to after son down’
Balancing work with family life with time for self with all of life’s compounding paraphernalia is probably one of the greatest challenges of modern day living. It is like the performer who balances porcelain plates on the end of long wooden sticks and attempts to keep each plate spinning on its stick while at the same time adding more plates to more sticks.
How many dishes are you spinning at the moment? Do you have too much on your plate, china? Maybe it’s time to clear out some of that crockery so that you can bring work under control and restore balance to your life.
The plate spinner’s dilemma is similar to the work/life balance conundrum. At what point are you spinning too many plates? What is the optimum? What is your optimum: Three, four, five . . . ? Some people have phenomenal ability to cope with heavy workloads and yet still have the resourcefulness to find time for a quiet life and a family life - perhaps because they are focused, with inherently good time management skills or maybe they just like the challenge?
Not everyone, however, is capable of the plate spinner’s lifestyle.
And the point at which you are overwhelmed by your workload and defeated by the dilemma is when the unforgiving, forgotten plate stops spinning, falls to the ground and smashes into smithereens.
Of course, some plates are worthless. They break, we shrug our shoulders and dispose of the pieces. But some plates are priceless. They are made of porcelain – the finest bone china - as fragile as family life, as delicate and irreplaceable as life itself. I have read recently of a few high-flying executives who swopped the high life for family life. On his resignation, one such executive was quoted as saying, “I am relinquishing my position, not because my children need me but because I need my children.”
If your balancing act is beginning to affect your health or your life or your family life, you are probably running around, spinning too many plates on too many sticks.
Review your workload, reduce your commitments and get a handle on your life before you’re shattered. Don’t be a mug!
Look after yourself.
Balancing Act - To learn more about this author, visit Thomas Chalmers's Website.
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