Typically, career choices are made based upon responsibilities, compensation, or prestige where a businessperson makes a change to get a higher salary, more responsibility, or greater prestige. What about the situation, though, where the driver behind a career choice isn’t any of these; where it’s the needs of a child that drive the change? My choice was precisely that.

Trevor was a happy, normal, active baby. He was able to laugh, coo, cry, and do all of the other normal things that his big sister, Briana did at that age. To my wife Patty and me, everything seemed to be just fine. At about age two, we noticed that Trevor was hardly saying any words and was very into his own world with puzzles, coloring, and videos. 

With the vacation season in the rear-view mirror, many of us are going to get back to the grind of working too much, not getting enough sleep, eating poorly and not getting enough exercise.   The concept of work life balance to most is just a bunch of theoretical baloney espoused by a bunch of talking-head motivational speakers and organizational leaders.  There’s simply no way out of the imbalance, right?

BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT.  Wrong.

As a parallel to the book, I developed an excel spreadsheet to help you define good-enough goals and work towards those goals. The Nine Crucial Elements to Achieve Good-Enough Contentment Assessment includes an annual goal setting tab to help you identify what you'd like to achieve by the end of the year for each good-enough contentment element and put steps in place to do it. You can download the spreadsheet which you should use after reading the book.

Recently I read a Forbes article about navigating leadership challenges in a rapidly changing world. The article highlighted 10 areas of focus for survival.

Nothing on the list was an earth-shattering surprise for me. Things like building a robust network, cultivating emotional intelligence, and embracing continuous learning can be found on most lists of focus areas for leaders. What I found interesting was what the article listed as number one: Prioritize mental and physical health.

For some, this might not make much of an impression. For me, it brought back a trajectory-changing time in my life that happened more than 30 years ago.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Several years back I got into a conversation with a colleague about our kids.  He told me of how he took his daughters to the circus.  He wasn't able to afford it, but decided to go anyway.  While they were at the circus, he looked over at his oldest daughter.  The look on her face was one of utter contentment and delight.  Seeing his daughter's face caused my colleague to get all choked up.  The price of admission was redeemed through a priceless moment that my colleague shared with his daughter.   

Some time back I did an interview on the importance of dinnertime.  It reminded me of the importance of eating dinner as a family in the work/life balance equation so I thought I would post it here as well:

In your view, why aren't families sitting down to the dinner table like they did in the 1950s? 
Simple; families have allowed themselves to get so busy that they have come to accept that sitting down together for dinner isn't a necessity.  It all starts with the parents; if they don't sit down together or enforce that the family will be eating together, the family won't do it. Make sitting down together the rule and not doing so the exception.

My name is Lonnie, and I'm a victim of identity theft.

So check this out. A buddy of mine wrote a Facebook post about how someone stole his daughter's Social Security number and filed for unemployment benefits with Washington State's Employment Security Division (ESD). Having never occurred to me, I decided to go to ESD and attempt to file an unemployment claim. After I entered the information I received the following message:

The Social Security number (SSN) you entered already exists and is linked to this partly hidden email address: *****@fasternet.co

One Monday morning, Kyle showed up for a status meeting with his project team. Eva, a team member and close friend, noticed a pattern: Kyle looked perpetually exhausted. Concerned, she approached him, “Kyle, are you okay?”

“Yeah, just a hectic weekend with kids’ activities and prepping for the exec meeting this week.”

“I certainly understand,” Eva said. “Are you taking time to rest up? I know how demanding your life is right now.”

“I’ve got great work/life balance. It’s just very busy with everything going on,” Kyle said.

“Kyle, you remind me of my father. Always running at 100 miles an hour, thinking that ‘work/life balance’ by default meant rest. That was until he had a heart attack, caused by all the stress of trying to keep up. Rather than deciding to get some rest, the decision was made for him. Work/life balance doesn’t guarantee rest.”

Kyle paused for a moment, reflecting on Eva’s advice. “I hear you.”

“Be careful, I’m concerned about you.” Eva smiled at Kyle and walked back to her desk.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com

Recently I was having a discussion with a colleague. During the chat he made a comment that really resonated with me:

“I love my career—not just because of what I do, but also what it enables me to do.”

That one sentence seemed so simple, but so impactful. He was saying that his career was fulfilling, provided financially, and afforded him the flexibility to do non-work things that were really important to him. It was about both a great career and the benefits his career brought to the other aspects of his life.

As I ruminated over the concept, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to put a bit of definition around the “enabling me to do” phrase. I’ve written in the past about finding contentment in nine different life areas and thought that to be a reasonable starting point, as follows:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com

So let’s talk about over-used terms for a minute. 

If you’ve been in the business world for any length of time you’ve likely heard your management espouse the desire for employees to achieve greater work/life balance.  Many U.S. companies have adopted programs to help employees strike a better life balance by providing health club benefits, entertainment discount programs, and additional time off for events such as the birth of a child.  Despite all this, Americans are of the most overworked and flat-out busy people on earth, recently surpassing the Japanese and long surpassing the Europeans. With all this discussion of work/life balance, how can we in the U.S. also be of the most overworked people in the world?  The answer is pretty simple; many of us talk work/life balance, but don’t live work/life balance primarily because we don’t know how to do it.