Imagine a dedicated bodybuilder for a moment…
Every day he’s in the gym lifting heavy weights, growing his muscles, sculpting his physique. And every day in the kitchen he’s eating the right foods to support his muscle growth.
Except there’s a problem…
This bodybuilder doesn’t understand the concept of balance. And so he’s been working out just ONE side of his body. So maybe he has a huge, rock-hard right arm, shoulder, thigh and calf. But the left side of his body is soft, flabby and tiny.
That would be absolutely ridiculous, wouldn’t it? Serious bodybuilders would never let their body get so asymmetrical.
But here’s the odd thing…
While most people would agree that the above exaggerated example is ridiculous, plenty of these same people are living asymmetrical lives. And many of these folks are wondering why they’re having troubles meeting their goals and finding success.
If you’re not yet where you want to be in your business or in your life, then the one thing you’ll want to consider is the “b” word:
Balance.
Let me give you a few examples:
- Some business owners spend the majority of their time focusing on getting targeted traffic, but they don’t balance this activity with converting this traffic. Thus their traffic logs are big, but their bank accounts are small. Imbalance causes imbalance!
- Some business owners don’t properly balance their business activities with their personal activities. And so they find themselves working all the time, which eventually leads to feeling burned out. Again, imbalance leads to more imbalance!
When we talk about balance, we’re talking about where you’re putting your time, energies, resources and attention. And it truly is a balancing act.
On the one hand, you need to be sure that you’re paying proper attention to the different components of your business and your life. But on the other hand, you need to be sure that your balancing act isn’t causing you to spread yourself too thin.
Example: Many business owners realize they need to diversify their business. And so they enter multiple niches. They use multiple traffic strategies. They create multiple products.
That’s great, and they are all good ways to help introduce balance into one’s business. But if you try to implement them all at once, then you’re going to spread yourself too thin.
Maybe you’ll end up with poor quality because you don’t have enough time to do it right. Or maybe you’ll have good results, but on a personal level you’ll burn out and your relationships will suffer because you’re sitting in front of your computer all the time.
Balance! Successful people practice balance, and if you want to be successful then you need to find balance in your life and business too.
You can start right now by honestly assessing your business and your life by asking yourself these questions…
- What gets too much attention?
Is there some area where you seem to spend a lot of time, attention and other resources?
One common problem is that people tend to spend too much time focusing on things that bring them the smallest return on their investment. In other words, they tend to focus on time-consuming, low- value tasks, which means they neglect the high-value task.
Example #1: Email. Whether you’re looking at your personal inbox or your business inbox, you probably get a lot of email. And you probably spend a lot of time reading it, thinking about it, and replying to it. However, chances are this is a low value task for you, especially if you’re simply dealing with customer inquiries that someone else would be perfectly capable of handling.
Example #2: Another problem is that these low-value tasks often seem to be urgent. You see that email coming in and you feel like you need to drop everything and answer it. Again, by giving a low-value task (like email) too much attention, you’re likely to run out of time to do your high-value tasks (like marketing).
- What area needs more attention?
Usually this is fairly easy to determine, because it’s the area where you’re getting poor results or something seems to be missing.
You might feel like you’re spinning your wheels in a certain area, or maybe it seems like your progress has stalled. Chances are, this is because you’ve neglected a certain area.
Let’s go back to the example I gave you in the beginning of the article.
Example: Maybe you look at your traffic logs and they show plenty of traffic, yet your bank account doesn’t reflect the same type of success. If so, then it’s likely you’re neglecting conversions (e.g., testing and tracking your sales process).
- Where should you focus your attention? You’ve identified what gets too much attention and which activities don’t get enough attention.
Now it’s time for you to make some decisions to bring everything back into balance. Here’s what to do:
- Rebalance your attention, time and energy. In continuing with the example above, a business owner would simply spend less time on email and devote that extra time to spend on important marketing tasks. In some cases, this is as simple as prioritizing tasks and then devoting the proper amount of attention to each of these tasks.
- Develop systems to become more efficient. In other words, find ways to get more done in less time. This frees your time to make sure important tasks are getting enough attention. And it also helps ensure you balance your personal and business life.
- Outsource or delegate as needed. Don’t spread yourself too thin – delegate or outsource as needed so that you don’t become imbalanced simply because you’re trying to do everything yourself.
Conclusion
The world’s most successful people know that balance is a key to their success.
Not only do they know how to balance the various components of any project, but they also know how to balance their business and personal lives. And when you learn how to start balancing your business and your life too, it’s almost certain that you’ll start seeing more success.
Give it a try for yourself!