Trying to do it all
One of the main reasons people do THE SHRED is because it suits their busy lives.
Ask 100 Shredders why they do the Shred and topping the list of answers will be: “Flexibility.”
Some Shredders do shift work. Almost every evening, you’re taking children to football or camogie or swimming or youth club. You simply don’t have the time to get to the gym two or three times a week.
People are busy.
That’s not to say THE SHRED automatically fixes this problem.
Because once you sign up to THE SHRED, you’re urged to make your health and well-being a major priority.
You’re urged to get leaner, fitter and stronger.
Stay in a calorie deficit, do 10,000 steps a day, do three sessions a week.
But how do you fit a job, raising children, taxi duties, a social life, and THE SHRED into a single-day?
How do you achieve that mythical work/life balance?
It’s an important question to address because it’s something that faces every single one of us.
Oliver Burkeman, a journalist with The Guardian spent more than a decade writing a column about time management techniques and productivity hacks. He is the author of the book: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
Having tried every time management technique under the sun, Burkeman eventually came to a ground-breaking realisation.
“If you are coming at these techniques with a desire to feel somehow on top of your time and on top of your life, ultimately you are going to fail," says Burkeman.
He went on: "Trying to make time for everything is a futile quest. You can only make time for some things that matter. You must let other things go."
On the utopian ideal of achieving Work/Life Balance, Burkeman says we shouldn’t even attempt it.
“Work/Life balance is a myth. It sounds so lovely because what it means is that people tend to believe that they should feel 100% perfect at work and 100% perfect at life outside work and that’s impossible.
“That’s a vicious kind of pressure. Struggling to achieve that kind of perfection is an awful thing to do because it’s basically impossible. Under the guise of seeking more calm and balance, people are actually holding themselves to quite a cruel standard.”
Burkeman suggests an alternative strategy.
He says we should take a “seasonal approach to imbalance”.
This means accepting there will be times in the year or your life when certain things must take priority over others.
“If you are a young adult early in your career, there is something to be said for going All-In on your career for a while. Or, if you are the parents of young children, you might have to do a certain amount of work, but go easy on yourself. You might have to find a way to do the minimum required for a while. Don’t feel bad about that because you’ve got this very important thing going on in life outside work.”
In essence, stop seeking perfection.
Accept the imperfection and that at certain times your life will be imbalanced.
Because whatever time management technique you attempt, there will always be more work. You’re never going to get everything done.
And, no matter how hard you try, you will never master 100% perfection with work/life balance. It’s impossible. So, don’t even try it.
Instead, seek your battles carefully.
Identify what’s really important to you and focus on that.
Burkeman says: "The only time management technique worth its salt is:
Step One: Choose something that you know matters to you
Step Two: Figure out when you are going to do it.
Step Three: There is no step three."
PH
Get leaner, fitter and stronger on: www.theshred.co.uk
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