Chapter 22

TIME AND BALANCE

MANY BUSINESS OWNERS with whom I spoke and many managers and leaders with whom I’ve consulted mention a perceived lack of time as their key challenge. Given that everyone on the planet has the same amount of time available to him or her, our perceptions of time deficit aren’t about time itself but about how we use it. So what does that make the issues of time and balance? For the big-vision small-business owner, they’re opportunities for developing mastery and sharpening yet another qualitative growth edge.

Business owners, like many other people, seem to have an overwhelming number of issues and responsibilities competing for their attention on any given day. And many of them seem pretty disorganized, which affects everything from punctuality to how quickly they respond to phone calls or e-mail messages (if they have a system that helps manage such communications at all!). With such a long to-do list, it’s no wonder that time seems to evaporate. How is it, then, that some individuals seem to accomplish so much more than others?

As philosopher Jacob Needleman writes in his book Time and the Soul, “It is only the Self that overcomes time.” And the rewards of Self-revealing, big-vision practices are tangible. Needleman follows with an astute insight about the inherent conflict between having an obsession with time and wanting to nurture the Voice of the Self that makes the need for time management moot.¹⁵ There can be an uncomfortable tension between, on one hand, the psychological reality that being obsessed with time (or the lack of it) distances you from a so-called time-management solution and, on the other hand, the practical reality that there is much among your daily responsibilities that calls for your attention. While philosophical writings can help you find a more balanced perspective regarding time and how you approach it, you still live in a world where time measures and constraints are given importance.

In the real, versus idyllic, world, there are issues that, if not deftly approached, contribute to the perception of “not having enough time”; these include delegation, time management, deadline acceleration, “time cramps” created by resistance to necessary action, and a feeling of having the way you spend your time being out of balance with your priorities (or at least what you think your priorities should be). A good solution for me is to partner philosophical or spiritual practices with the more practical time-management strategies. For example, prioritizing my daily task list makes an enormous difference in the pace of the day, while meditation helps foster the clarity that can allow me to see what my real priorities are and find time where I thought none existed.

Some business owners have other time-management difficulties. When I first started interviewing business owners for this book, for example, several entrepreneurs expressed genuine interest in participating but missed several telephone interview appointments because of poor time management and delegation abilities. Their tendency is probably to “fire fight,” or jump from crisis to crisis, and thus they’re never in control of how they spend their workday. Sound familiar?

Crisis junkies may be addicted to the adrenalin rush of being in crisis mode and refrain from delegating to others on their team who are either qualified to assist or who could develop the skills necessary to manage some, if not all, of the details currently hoarded by the business owner. To that, you might say, “I don’t have anyone on my team who can do this.” Maybe so, but there are likely employees who could take on additional responsibilities and, in doing so, clear out some of the clutter from your day. Without giving them an opportunity, these individuals will never develop the facility to manage such responsibilities with confidence—their own and yours. If your team is truly stretched to capacity and you and others are still fire fighting throughout the day, you need to review whether disorganization or inefficiency are problems or whether your staffing and revenue plans need to be revisited. These are symptoms that often respond well to big-vision medicine, and that’s one prescription you can write yourself.

Additional time-related bad habits include chronically accelerating your deadlines (a syndrome I battle) and giving yourself “time cramps” by resisting action when you know action is needed. Accelerating your deadlines—starting with a realistic deadline and then immediately moving your due dates closer—makes you anxious for at least two reasons: the new deadlines are inevitably unrealistic and add unnecessary activities to your daily to-do list. This exacerbates your short-term time crunch. Isn’t it amazing that you cause yourself such suffering? Fortunately, skills in prioritization, efficiency, time and personal management, and clear thinking are, if not inherent, learnable. And once again, the big-vision small-business owner sees such deficits as opportunities for cultivating mastery, gaining wisdom, and using both to better serve his organization’s stakeholders—employees, customers, vendors, and others in the community beyond.

There is a potentially high cost of not choosing some strategy, of allowing imbalance to be your default. “One of the problems is that, as business owners, we spend so many hours in our businesses that we give up all of our hobbies, some of our friends, and our lives,” says Bill Hayes of Estey Printing in Boulder, Colorado. “The focus, particularly for men, is growing the business and securing our future. Because of that, a lot of men who own businesses also go through divorce.” Hayes found himself feeling burned out in 1998 and took a three-month sabbatical to determine if he wanted to continue being a business owner. Although he seriously considered selling his business, he ultimately decided to buy another firm. As a result, he doubled the size of his business and added a seasoned operations manager who was adept at managing the printing firm’s staff—something Hayes had previously done.

“During my three months off, I planted 300 bulbs in my garden,” remembers Hayes. “There has to be a balance between family, your employees, and yourself. Don’t give up your hobbies; don’t give up your family; don’t work every single day. Go home and garden, because you can’t grow your business if you’re not having a good home life.”

As with everything else, what constitutes balance is subjective. “Balance to me is having everything in my life that I want,” said Linda Manassee Buell, founder and owner of Simplify Life in Poway, California. “That means having time for myself, for my family and for my business.” Buell spent 17 years as a corporate manager before starting her own company to share what she learned in her quest for a more balanced life. “When you’re doing the things you love in your life and having the things you love in your life, and you’re saying ‘yes’ to the things you love, life is simple,” said Buell. “When it’s not that way, we’re saying ‘yes’ to things we don’t really want to say ‘yes’ to.”

When Buell begins working with a client who is searching for more meaning and balance in his life, she asks him to create a vision of what he wants his life to look like. If he’s like many people, the client might have difficulty with this task and find it easier to begin by identifying the pieces of his current reality that he’d like to see changed. Another question that Buell might ask her client is “What behavior are you modeling to your children, employees, or clients,” and then he should determine whether that would be a part of the optimal vision. Once the client has defined what a more balanced life would look like for him, Buell will often ask him to become disciplined in using a daily planner to list out all of the key priorities and activities for the upcoming week and each day, including personal and family activities. She recommends assigning a color code for key categories of activity—self, family, business, community, and so forth—to make it easier to see where imbalance might be lurking and priorities are skewed. While such an assignment seems simple enough, and is certainly valuable, some of her clients find the shift grueling.

“Some people just aren’t used to operating on a self-directing basis,” she said. “If they’re coming from a corporate background, they’re used to working at someone else’s direction. They might be used to operating off deadlines and like that adrenaline rush. It’s like an addiction, so in changing that, they’re operating in a way that feels different at first. Ultimately, they get to the point where operating under that crisis-inspired adrenaline rush just doesn’t feel right.”

Just as with an addiction, changing the behavioral habits that create imbalance can be challenging, so that guiding vision is crucial. “Vision is very important, whether that’s the big vision for your business, the vision for your life with your family, or even your vision for what your house or office look like when they’re cleaned up,” emphasized Buell. “That vision will help you focus when you’re in the tunnel and things look hard and painful. The vision is what will help you move through that pain and fear.”¹⁶

What does “living in balance” mean to you? What are your highest priorities? Does the way you currently spend your time reflect these priorities? If not, look at how you can reprioritize, delegate, or better manage your time so that you’re attending to the people, activities, and things that really are important to you. Don’t wait until you have time, because by then you may have to pay an unpleasant price. Do it sooner rather than later and make sure you’re living according to your highest priorities. What can help you find the clarity and inspiration to pursue this and other big-vision priorities? Choosing a slate of wisdom and mastery practices that is appropriate to your spiritual or philosophical tradition and lifestyle. The next chapter offers ideas and reflections on some of the options that are available to you.