I took the day off yesterday.

I felt kinda bad about it.

But it also felt really awesome.

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Play hard, work hard, sweat hard: Finding work-life balance

When I think about the top 3 things that are most important to me, I typically come up with a list that looks something like this:

Family & friends (play)

Work & feeling fulfilled (work)

Health & nutrition (sweat)

Let’s be real: sometimes it can be hard to accomplish meeting our expectations in all of these areas of our lives. There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year.

As entrepreneurs, work-life balance is often a hot topic: how do we find it, and once we’ve found it, how do we continue to achieve it day in and day out?

How do we know if we’ve found work-life balance?

Ultimately, it starts with defining or identifying our gauge so we know whether or not we’re meeting our expectations of what we say is most important to us.

What’s work-life balance to you?

Is it how we feel at the end of every day? How successful we see ourselves as being overall?

I wish I knew the answer, but I’m writing this because I’m on a mission to getting closer to finding out.

I often think about what’s most important to me, and whether or not I’m leading a life that stays true to what I say I want. I strive to check myself daily to make sure that I don’t get swept away by obsession. Work-life balance isn’t always easy to find.

I’ve found that I get closer to achieving work-life balance through practicing everything in moderation, although there have definitely been days in the past couple of years where moderation only exists as it relates to one of the three areas I described above at any given time – rarely all 3.

To me, I think work-life balance requires just that: a balance.

Why just do 1 when we can do all 3?

This is the most recent question I asked myself after breaking a hard sweat at the gym: Why just do 1 when we can do all 3? 

If we love and claim that all 3 are most important to us, and we know that if we can find a balance then we’ve brought ourselves very close – if not right up to – achieving work-life balance, then why aren’t we leading a life where we play hard, work hard and sweat hard every day?

When I took the day off yesterday I felt kinda bad about it. But then I realized what I considered a day off actually consisted of me working for more than 3 hours in the morning. I followed that up with a great workout, and an afternoon filled with sunshine, family and friends.

What I initially considered a “day off” was actually my perfect day.

But what I hadn’t considered is that my perfect day was just that because of one important distinction:

When I was working, I was fully focused on the task at hand. When I was in the gym sweating it out, I was all in. And when I was enjoying the outdoors with my family and friends, nothing else mattered – I was in the moment.

So perhaps that’s how we measure work-life balance? Our ability to do the things we love the most without letting distractions take us anywhere else but exactly where we are.

What about you? How do you think about work-life balance, and what are steps you’re taking to actively achieve it in your own life? Let us know in the comments section below!