The Executives Work / Life Balance

‘There’s never enough time in the day in our fast-moving world we live in. As an Executive who was making his career, I can remember working at home in the evening and often at the weekends. Today the hard-pressed Executive experiences the pressure of their company demands and their own internal need to demonstrate their hard work and commitment to their bosses.

The consequences of this can have serious consequences, some of which include: –

Fatigue is inevitable with so much energy used in progressing work matters and not being refreshed mentally or physically with other quite different diversions and outside interests.

  • Such levels of company activity can impair family life and involvement with friends. Lost time with our spouses can cause all sorts of negative repercussions and reduced time with children is harmful in terms of your experience with offspring.
  • Most importantly, health can easily be affected, not least of all with the possible impact on mental health.

So, what can we do to make sure we perform effectively and successfully at work but create a sensible work/life balance? 

  1. With a heavy workload, why not try to separate what is important/critical/urgent from the less important and mundane.
  2. Indeed, why not create a position where it’s possible to organise others to take on the less important tasks or even reassign them to another team.
  3. This can be further aided by having the well known “to do list”. We all know about this and its value but how many of us really do this on a regular basis? This is not only to identify the “to do’s” but then to assign a level of importance/urgency to the work and then focus attention on the key issues.
  4. One of the reasons we, as executives, spend more time on work than is good for us, is that the day is one long challenge. The brain and body starts to get tired after a period of time spent concentrating on one issue. It can be between one hour and one and a half hours. Its helpful after this period of time to take a short break and return to the matter at hand afterwards. This will actually lead to getting the work done in a shorter time by being fresher.
  5. Our modern world means constant emails “pinging” on our computers and more importantly on our mobile phones. This doesn’t stop at work and carries on through our mobiles. Although it’s a real challenge setting aside say 2-4 sessions a day to deal with emails, it can be much more effective with less distractions through the day.

I realise how difficult all of this can be and executives have few people to discuss this with in the company for fear of negative responses and unfair career-damaging conclusions. I have found as a coach its possible to work with the executive to create an effective work/life balance and to maintain that successful career development.

Kenneth Andrew Executive Coach

If you would like to talk about this please give me a call on 077104 88282 or email me at kenneth@kennethandrew.co.uk.