Complaints About Your Performance and Deliverables Are a Sign of Work-Life Imbalance
Complaints About Your Performance and Deliverables Are a Sign of Work-Life Imbalance
When your personal and professional lives are struggling to get what they need from you, it can cause a flood of outside judgment on you. Initially, you just sense the uneasy feeling of not having everything under control.
You know that your sleep schedule is off. The lack of energy you experience, plus the focus to get everything done on your to do list causes stress and you know you’re letting yourself and your loved ones down.
But eventually, it’s not just you that it’s affecting. You will begin to see cracks in your relationships with your family and friends as well as your colleagues, customers and clients.
It’s then that you know something must be done about it. If you let it go unattended, you will have to suffer the consequences of your inability to manage your time properly. Most of getting your personal and professional lives in sync is nothing more than a time management issue, paired with disorganized priorities.
You have to know what comes first in your day, and create a schedule that allows you to get your most important tasks completed. That’s not always work related, by the way. If you have a commitment to go to your child’s school play, then that must be prioritized just as much as the completion of a project is.
Often times, you won’t receive a large intervention at the first sign of a struggle between your personal and professional life. People may not say anything to you at all in the beginning.
They simply feel the disappointment stemming from your disorganization and quietly hope that you’ll get it back on track. Later, they may feel the need to speak up. This can come in the form of subtle comments or even showing care and concern.
They may ask if you are okay. They may suggest you do something different. While these positive and caring moments are not mean in any way, underneath it all, the person discussing this with you may be disappointed.
They are trying to help. But usually, a situation of work life imbalance must be fixed by you and you alone. When things begin to really go off the rails, you will start seeing a more vocal and brash response.
You may start having arguments with your spouse, seeing your children react with tears because of your lack of involvement. Your friends may begin to alienate you. Customers will launch complaints and give you poor reviews for the work that they feel is lacking.
You may be shut out of joint venture agreement because of your poor performance. You never want to let things get to this stage. But if it already has, you need to take a step back and find a solution to achieve balance in your life.
Then, go to those who have complained and reassure them that you have taken steps to better the situation and rectify what was wrong. If possible, you can make it up to them in some way by setting aside some time to devote to their needs.