How to Live a Balanced Life?

I've started working on a draft, which is unfinished as a post for one of my websites, but I thought I'd share here.

Many want or dream of a well balanced life, but have no idea what that would look like, let alone reaching it.

I have made a good deal of progress towards having a balanced life myself, starting from just the opposite: in my previous careers, I was a workaholic. You could call this post the "Epilogue to the Story of a Recovering Workaholic."

I didn't get to my nice well balanced life in a day: it tooks years to build it from the workaholic starting point of my old past. So here is my example:

My Weekly Schedule

In this modern era, most of us lead very busy lives. It can feel very difficult to fit in all that one wants to do in a day, and of course one needs to prioretize.

I enjoy working my own hours from home, and this makes it much easier to achieve balance.

However it is not required, and you can take my girlfriend's schedule as an example: it is quite similar to mine, but she also works two jobs that she enjoys, including a full 9-5 job and her part-time job as a figure skating coach (about 6-8 hours per week).

The Morning Routine

Every well balanced life should begin with a morning routine. Every morning, about 30 minutes after waking up, my girlfriend and I go through the 5 Tibetan morning routine, missing perhaps only 1 day every 3 months. I highly recommend this routine, and if you know of something better, please let me know.

Physical Activity

We do figure skating 3-4 times per week, usually Mondays 5-7 PM, Wednesdays 8-9 AM, Fridays 7-9 PM and/or Saturdays 3-5 PM. This adds up to 4-6 hours on the ice per week.

We do acroyoga 2-3 times per week, e.g. one evening (Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) and during the weekend. We also go running 2-3 times per week, for about 5 km, on dry days without skating or acroyoga.

Sometimes we have dance lessons in the evening, or practice the dances over the weekend, taking time away from the other activities.

Finally, nearly every day, for 1-2 hours, I do a variety of stretching exercises, yoga, Pilates, which I feel I need in order to relax and stay in shape.

Artistic Activity

I practice the piano for 2-3 hours from 3 to 6 PM on weekdays, except Wednesdays or skating days, when I am lucky when I can manage to squeeze in an hour of piano. Also we have fun once in a while singing to lyrics from music on YouTube.

Family and Relationships

After skating in the morning, I give my Wednesday to my mom, from about 10 AM to 5 PM, to help her with moving out of her house. This can include some gardening work, which I enjoy, especially the part about taking pictures of flowers.

I visit my dad every other weekend, and visit some of my girlfriend's large family, or my own, on most weekends. We also find a bit of time for friends.

Entertainment

About once a week, we try to have one good experience out of a broad spectrum of potential activities: a dance, music or theater show, a movie, a restaurant, a spa, etc.

Work

I'm working about 20-30 hours per week. Most weeks, that means 4 blocks of 5 hours from about 9 to 3 PM, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. For me, this work consists of blogging, building and maintaining my websites.

I also do a bit of follow up nearly daily, including the weekends. I'm rather undisciplined, so that I end up doing other things thank working during my 9-3 blocks...

Sleep

We aim for 8-9 hours in bed every night, typically from 10 PM to 7 AM.

Meals

Our breakfast consists mainly of fresh fruit, from 7 to 7:30 AM. Lunch on weekdays is a bag of nuts and dried fruits. Dinner is varied, usually something from the Mediterranean diet or Asia, and contains a lot of vegetables.

Chores

There are a number of chores needed to support all the rest. We live in small flats that don't require much of time to clean. During the week, we live in my flat downtown, since that's convenient for my girlfriend to get to work. During the weekends, I joke that we live in the "countryside", in her flat that is far from the city center.

We have plenty of driving to do, to go from one flat to the other, or to the skating rink, or to family members, or grocery shopping. But most trips are 20-30 minutes long. Thus we don't waste a ton of time in traffic jams.

Conclusion

This was my portray of what consists of a well balanced life for myself, in this period of time. This will surely be different in a few months for me, and is surely very different for you.

Some questions you may want to ask yourself:

What gets in the way of you living a well balanced life? What can you do about it, right now?