The year is moving forward. We are already into February. If you have not landed on a new year’s resolution yet, don’t give up. I have a suggestion for you. How about doing something to build a better Business Quality of Life (BQL)? As a professional, you spend most of your waking time working your job. That said, it makes sense to evaluate your BQL, and see what you can do to improve your career life.
But let’s back up a step, and ask the question “Should you make a resolution at all?” In a word, “YES”. Resolutions are just types of goals that we set for ourselves. Even if we fall short of reaching our ultimate goal, we are usually better off just having made the commitment. Hoping that you are still game for taking on a resolution, or goal, let’s revisit what it means to have a good, or great BQL.
I have written a fair amount on BQL. But here is my definition of BQL: Business Quality of Life is the degree of social interactions, personal freedom, fulfillment, satisfaction and health we experience as impacted by our business environment, relationships, and demands. From this definition, BQL is something real. Something we experience, and feel every day we do our job – whether we are aware of it or not. The other information you can gather from the definition above is in what areas of our life will improve when we have better BQL. That being; socially, in personal freedom, fulfillment, satisfaction (or peace of mind), and health.
To get a start on improving your BQL, let’s break your life down into categories. With a pen, and paper list out “Social”, “Personal Time”, “Goals”, “Peace of mind”, and “Health”. Give these categories some thought, and decide which of the categories most need improvement. If you may feel that you have multiple areas of your life that need improvement. But for this exercise, and to give you the best chance for success, just pick one category, and circle the term.
When you have finished the step above, you will have identified your target. Now get creative and consider one thing that you can do to make improvements in that area. For the most part, there are usually two ways to improve your BQL. One way involves setting boundaries. A boundary is a construct to protect things that we value in our life. Boundaries can take many forms, depending on what we are trying to protect, what our BQL goal is. The second area is in improving efficiencies in our life to get back time and energy to pursue healthy actives.
To take this out of the abstract, let me give some examples of BQL goals, and what boundaries would look like for each example. If you want to build social interaction, say with your wife, husband, or significant other, one good option is to shut off electronics (interruptions from work), and the TV and have a dinner that encourages conversation. In this case you are blocking off (creating a boundary) against electronics so you can focus your attention on one you love, and want to have interaction with. If your BQL goal is to improve peace of mind, you may choose to take a 15-minute break at your offices, and walk around the office grounds. In this case the you are temporarily stepping away from demands of your job, with the goal of clearing your head (peace of mind) so you can re-engage again with your job with a clearer head – refreshed as it were. If you want to improve personal time, you may draw boundaries around a particular day of the week; for example, Sundays. You make the commitment that any additional work you need to do during a crunch you will do early morning, or in the evenings, or even Saturday if you need to but Sunday is blocked off as personal time. You have setup a boundary against work demands so that you have one day a week for personal time.
Another way we can “buy” time, and energy for healthy pursuits, is by building in better efficiencies in our job, and life. If you find you are doing things that is duplicate effort – see if you can combine them. See if there are activities that you can minimize or eliminate. In certain companies working remotely is an option; in some companies it is even encouraged. The 30, or 40, or 60 minutes a day you are not commuting, is 30, 40, or 60 minutes you gain back in your life to do other healthy things to improve your BQL. If you are dispersing the same information multiple times, to multiple teams, or individuals, see if there is a way you can disperse information to all teams through one channel, or message. If you can do this you remove duplicate efforts, and gain back some time, and energy.
Even though you are a couple weeks into January, there is still time to set a resolution, or goal for yourself. My challenge to consider how to improve your Business Quality of Life (BQL) because your job has the biggest impact on your waking hours, and ultimately your quality of life. To improve your chances for success, consider just one area of your life that your job impacts, and decide on just one action step you can make to improve your life.
Author: Brian Kail, MBA, CPC, is a Career & Executive Coach. For more information see AscendProCoach.com
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