By Wendy Kaufman

What can you do when your work-life balance is out of kilter?  It happens to most of us with busy lives. And it isn’t always easy to detect the problem, let alone get the right solution.

Work-life balance has been a passion of mine for over 25 years. I know firsthand the many issues we all have to face on a daily basis that have a profound effect on our success at work, our health, and the health of our families.  When I started working in the area, I found gaps not only in the kinds of information available but also in the relevance of that information to my life. I attended some not so great work-life balance trainings, but they didn’t help me to make changes in my life.

So I came up with my own way of tackling the challenge of establishing a balance based on real-life situations and dilemmas.  I call it the “Five Buckets” system.  It centers around  the idea that if you exert too much energy, focus, time, or money on one, then the others will suffer. At first glance, the five buckets may not appear to cover all aspects of everyone’s life.  But I think they are fairly comprehensive, and applicable to most people’s lives. Over 20 years in this field, including some academic study, has shown that each of these buckets is as important as the other. 

1. Work —This bucket includes the kind of schedule you have, what you do for paid or unpaid work, in an office, at home or a nontraditional work setting; it includes your career goals. 
2. Spouse/Family  and Friends —This bucket  refers to  who is in your social sphere.  This is where you ask yourself if you are prioritizing your loved ones in the right manner. 
3. Health — Do you take care of yourself, have annual checkups, know what your healthy numbers are, like weight, blood pressure and cholesterol ? Are you doing all you can to be healthy? 
4. Finances —A big bucket for everyone! Do you live in fear of foreclosure, which in a recent study was shown to be a major concern of many people in the last few years? Do you know your credit score, and have you made time to do your budget? 
5. Giving Back— This is about not only looking inward: it is about giving back to friends, workmates, communities, the world. To paraphrase Victor Frankel, from his book Man’s Search for Meaning,  those who give most are more successful. 

I encourage and urge individuals to focus on filling each bucket to about 80%.   Why only that far? In the attempt to fill them to the brim, we may have a tendency to fill one at the expense of another.  It goes hand in hand with the 80-20 rule idea that it is not beneficial to spend your energy on perfecting the last 20% of anything if 80% is OK . Just good enough is good enough. 

Let’s take Chris as an example.  He came to my seminar and said:  “I built a successful business, and the revenues are growing every year.  I thought I would be happy, but I am miserable.”  After looking at Chris’  situation, I realized his work and finance buckets were full to overflowing.  Further discussion revealed that the other buckets were empty:  he had gained 50 pounds, his health was compromised, his family and friends were absent from his life, and he was completely unconnected to his community.  He asked, “What business book can I read to get my life back?”

The answer was not in a book. What I suggested to him—and would suggest to others like him —is: don’t hit the snooze button, get out of bed, get on the scale, and start your day with some cardio or exercise.  Have a family breakfast; talk to your family instead of just running out the door. 

A CEO that I coach complains that she has no relationship with her teenage daughter.  She has rationalized this, saying that it is because her daughter is a teenager and relationships with teenagers  are always tough.   But she has had to admit that she has not been around much, missed several events at her school, and used sarcasm one too many times.  She needs to look at her day to day schedule (including weekends and nights) and make an effort to attend her daughter’s school events,  apologize for the mistakes that have occurred and move on.   My suggestion was to get a calendar and mark in red important “can’t miss” family events.  I am not saying you have to go to every soccer game but you should not miss those things that are of paramount importance to your family. 

Six months later I am happy to report that not only is this CEO’s relationship with her daughter better, but her work atmosphere has become more pleasant.  She is not thinking about losing her daughter all the time anymore.

Recently in my own life, my dad had a heart attack, and I took two months off from every bucket except family.  I concentrated on “what needed to be done.”  Now I can revisit all the buckets, get back to the gym,  attend networking meetings, go to a Broadway show with my husband, and still have time to see my parents,  as well as volunteer for a new committee for the not-for-profit board that I am on. 

This is a prime example of how important it is to prioritize the five buckets of your life on a regular basis. Those priorities will shift and they aren’t the same for all of us. But finding the right balance between them—and understanding the choices we make— is important to everyone.

Wendy Kaufman is the founder of Balancing Life’s Issues ,a national training company.  Wendy earned a Master’s Degree in Industrial Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.  A senior instructor at the American Management Association, Wendy is certified in Emotional Intelligence, Steven Covey 7 Habits  and Leadership.  Wendy’s personal clients include Open Door Medical Center, Coach, Donna Karan, ANZ Bank. Wendy has implemented continuous improvement models at each of these clients over the past ten years.