Balance 2: The Daily Battle

Margaret Pinard
Nov 3 · 3 min read
Photo by Cindy Tang on Unsplash

Many people wrestle with maintaining a structure outside the conventional 9–5 shift. How does someone in complete control of her schedule decide what to every day, every hour, every tick of the clock? Madness! (And decision fatigue)

We want to make progress on goals, establish a business, maybe get a part-time job, network with other freelancers, etc. All the things! But what is the right pace? A person can only answer that for herself, and perhaps the only way to figure it out is to experiment.

I see four quadrants, not unlike the classic Urgent/Important matrix, that can help us see where we feel the most comfortable.

Just like the last pair of thinking patterns, there is a good side of each of these quadrants, as long as one doesn’t go in too extreme a direction.

The Good Side, or ‘Challenging Yourself’

Here are several positive attributes of challenging yourself:

  • in reflecting, you get to know yourself better…
  • which means you set better goals for yourself…
  • which means you can better achieve what you set for yourself.

The Dark Side, or ‘Being Too Hard On Yourself’

Going off the deep end of challenging yourself gets you into the territory of being too hard on yourself, an aggressive, possibly abusive posture. Today my friend Melia, a productivity-guru extraordinaire, referenced this end of the stick in her Instagram post. Here are some negative consequences of going too far:

  • cyclical negative thinking
  • dissatisfaction with, and inability to appreciate, the present
  • skewed ability to evaluate your own work

The Good side, or ‘Accepting Yourself’

The other side of this spectrum is more relaxed, more passive, and can have some benefits as well:

  • less vulnerability to outside criticism as you feel stronger within
  • less need to seek outside validation

When you’re less vulnerable to criticism, you feel firmer in your resolutions, and spend less time worrying about what other people will think about your decisions. For my generation, I think we’ve been raised to think too much of others’ opinions, so this is a pretty healthy practice.

The Dark Side, or ‘Being Complacent’

This side takes the passivity to the extreme (Although I am entirely willing to admit this description is mostly my fear of this as an unknown- do you have a different opinion from a different vantage point?). Some negative effects of going too far in this direction include:

  • numbness to experiencing highs and lows
  • ignorance, or missing out on life
  • taking no action/ not becoming your own person

Maybe spend some time thinking about each of these effects. See what resonates. Are you tearing through your schedule but feeling desperately behind? Take a minute to validate the work you ARE doing rather than looking always to the lack.

Or are you hiding away from the world after a bout of defeat, hoping it will stop presenting demands so you can never get hurt again? (*ahem*) Take a deep breath and focus instead on your goals and baby steps you can take to get some momentum going. Experiment!

All learning encouraged!

Margaret Pinard

Written by

Writer, Reader: Intent on tasting all life can offer. Find my novels here: http://amzn.to/1V50wd5

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