Juggling All the Balls

Life is full of paradoxes; accepting them is a sure sign of wisdom. Today's paradox is focus is needed for outstanding results yet an unbalanced life is unsustainable. Focus and balance: What would Yoda say?

I think the answer is to focus on one thing at a time. I am convinced that multitasking only works with jobs that require no concentration or little creativity. I mean you can put in a load of laundry and then go check on the cooking rice, but then again I have burned rice too many times to count. (The answer to burned rice, by the way, is a rice cooker!)

Julia Cameron writes about a wonderful tool in her book, The Artist's Way. If I were more technologically savvy, I would reproduce it here but my efforts this morning have failed so far. Here is a narrative description.

The tool is a pie chart with 6 sections:

- spirituality

- work

- exercise

- play

- family/ friends

- romance/adventure

Draw a pie with these 6 sections. Although you can change the names of the categories. For example, you could put 'health' instead of 'exercise.' Now, imagine that the center of the pie represents 0, and the outside border of the pie, what you've drawn, represents a number, like 10. Then draw a dot in each pie slice that indicates your strong and not-so-strong areas, rating each from 0 to 10.

Ideally, you would connect these dots to make a symmetrical shape. Probably though, if you're like me, you can now see which areas need the most work.

The good news is the simple visualization of your life like this can help you restore balance. It worked for me. I drew my life-as-a-pie back in March and had two areas that were really low, and one that was much higher than the others. Looking at it 4 months later, I am living a more balanced life.

It's easier to achieve balance at the times of your life when you're aren't involved in a consuming project. But these projects give our life such intensity!

The goal is not to live each day in complete balance. The goal is to achieve balance over your lifetime. The pie can give you suggestions where to focus next.