Yet another entry about balance…

One of my goals for next year is to enjoy life outside of work more. I don’t know if that’ll take the form of working less/smarter, reading more/lighter, or what…but this weekend I’ve been continually reminded of balance and big decisions. On Thanksgiving, I read Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love–which, amongst other topics, questioned how the big decisions in our earlier years will affect us throughout our lives–but how we can act on them. Last night I saw Click with my family; it’s a cute story essentially about work-life balance. And then browsing a bookstore in Central Square tonight Chris and I came across Stephan Rechtschaffen’s Timeshifting, a novel about our perception of time. One quote that caught my attention:

The time management taught at business seminars is essentially designed to make you more materially productive… Once one project is finished–if you’ve allocated your time wisely–you’ll have time for the next…. But this simply turns up the speed on the treadmill of our lives–and, to the applause of those around us, we run faster. The reward for those who “manage” time well is usually just more to do.

I remember when I first began getting clients and I thought that by offering them ways to save time they’d be able to work less, maybe even spend more time with their families. But that assumption was naive–very rarely do people work less just because they can work smarter. I certainly haven’t.

A few nights ago I was looking through an old favorite, Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, and I came across a great quote from Goethe that he had apparently offered to Schopenhauer when confronted with his consistent unhappiness:

If you want to get pleasure out of life
You must first attach value to the world.

My reading of this is that one has to assign value to certain things in life, otherwise there will be very little pleasure. This may sound obvious, but it raises the question of whether one is valuing the correct things and thus allowing one to enjoy them. In the same book, it discussed Nietzsche’s complete change in both philosophical perspective and overall personal outlook after a vacation where he witnessed just how rich life could be. Nietzsche had shifted his values to enable him to make life not only fulfilling but somewhat more pleasurable.

I have a lot more reading to go, and certainly many decisions of my own to make. But if there’s one thing that’s painfully clear to me it’s that next year I’m going to not only relax a little more but enjoy doing a little less…