Off Balance: Getting Beyond The Work-Life Balance Myth To Personal And Professional Satisfaction (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
Off Balance: Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction by Mathew Kelly“Off Balance" is a very helpful and practical book on how to help the reader design and build a more satisfying life in both the personal and professional arenas. Best-selling author and consultant, Mathew Kelly, promises a more satisfying life through a personalized system that readers can apply to their lives. This useful 160-page book includes the following five chapters: 1. The Best Way to Live, 2. How Satisfied Are You?, 3. Can You Have It All?, 4. Batteries Included, and 5. Systems Drive Behaviors. Positives:1. A well-written, engaging book. Straight and to the point, it’s a breeze to read.2. A practical guide on how to lead a more satisfying life both on a personal and professional level.3. Kelly provides a useful framework, a system that leads to personal and professional satisfaction. “But most of the time, living a life that is deeply satisfying requires a strategy, daily attention, self-awareness, and discipline.”4. Kudos to the author for not pontificating, a personal concern going into this book. This book is truly intended for all the masses even for those of us with a personal relationship with reality.5. The author does a real good job of taking the reader by the hand. He provides a very clear step-by-step approach on how to use his system.6. Thought-provoking questions that will lead you to the need for change. “If you could change three things about your life, what would they be?” So, how is the best way to live? Find out.7. Helps clarify concepts. Differentiating pleasure from satisfaction. 8. The three philosophies of our age. “Individualism, hedonism, and minimalism will destroy every individual and community that practices them.”9. The three principles common to all men and women of goodwill. “In these three principles—you are here to become the-best-version-of-yourself, virtue is the ultimate organizing principle, and self-control is central to the best way to live—we find the common elements that bind us all together in our quest to answer the question ‘How is the best way to live?’”10. Helps you the reader, determine how satisfied you are.11. The importance of measurement. “If you cannot measure something, you cannot change it. Measuring something is critical to the process of change and improvement.” Twenty questions designed to measure satisfaction levels.12. Key components of success. “Success always has required and always will require sacrifice. If success were easy, it would be common.”13. How to make good choices. “The reason is that I have worked hard to figure out what really matters to me and have developed a value structure.”14. The need for unchanging values and principles to guide us. “Without a value structure our lives can get kidnapped by the urgent, and the most important things end up being mortgaged for the least important things.”15. The importance of energy. “Knowing how to balance various activities in our life to produce the maximum flow of energy is perhaps the most important skill any of us can learn and develop.”16. The four levels of energy.17. The importance of having a plan. “Either way, you need a plan, and the best plans are built on a system that will ensure the sustainability of the plan.”18. Kelly does a good job of teaching the reader how to use his system in order to produce results. “There are five facets to the process: (1) Assessment, (2) Priorities, (3) Core Habits, (4) Weekly Strategy Session, and (5) Quarterly Review.”19. Kelly shares his personal core habits.20. Provides web links, and info on how to contact his company.Negatives:1. I would have liked more examples in real-life businesses. A little business name-dropping never hurts. Examples of success.2. I don’t know if all the advice given is really as practical as the author makes it out to be. Some people really have some uphill obstacles to overcome including health issues or worse the denial of services. 3. No bibliography, links to notes or case studies. In summary, this is a very useful book. The book does provide some helpful advice on how to identify those things that will help the user achieve satisfaction in both personal and professional levels. The guidance provided is reasonable and is fairly easy to incorporate in one’s life. I would have liked to have seen real-life business cases and a little more science behind the system. If you are looking to achieve satisfaction in your life, I recommend this book.Further recommendations: “The Dream Manager” from the same author, “The One Thing” by Gary Keller, “Switch” by Chip and Dan Heath, “Work with Me” by Barbara Annis and John Gray, “Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t” by Jeffrey Pfeffer, “Outliers” and “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg, “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success” by Rick Newman, and “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. If you have struggled with applying work-life balance to your life, I'd highly recommend this book. Has several helpful tips and exercises as well as a good central thesis of switching focus from managing time to managing your energy; seeking a satisfying life instead of a balanced one; and not feeling guilty of unsuccessfully being "balanced" between life and work due to an unrealistic expectation established by a faulty interpreted concept. Really worth it and I'll revisit it again for pointers.
What do You think about Off Balance: Getting Beyond The Work-Life Balance Myth To Personal And Professional Satisfaction (2011)?
Will be launching a second read / listen - so no "review" just yet . . . lots to chew on here.
—alex16
Good read with tips for balancing work and family. Practical ideas for implementation.
—kie
There is no such thing as work/life balance
—Frank
