Achieving Balance

[SamuelBLong]

Bear with me... this sort of just came out during a quiet moment in the middle of the night...

Its something I think we don't spend enough time discussing.




168. Thats the number of hours we have in a week. No more. No less.

Subtract 56 hours (8hrs x 7 days) for what we should be using for sleep, that leaves us 112 hours. Some of will need more rest, some less, depending on what we are putting our bodies and brains through each day.

Subtract our average work time of 40 hours. Now we are down to 72 hours. Three days. Three days per week to achieve, maintain and most importantly improve our skillset(s).

Now think of all the areas that we must maintain in our limited time of 72 hours, especially for those of us who go into harms way or serve the public, in order to stay proficient and on top of things. (Some of these will overlap):

- Spouse / Significant Other / Relationship
- Children / Family
- Professional & Work Skills
- Shooting Skills
- Knife Skills
- Hand to Hand & Self Defense Skills
- Medical Training & Skills
- Vehicle Control & Driving Skill
- Physical Conditioning & General Health
- Internal & Mental Conditioning
- Thinking & Problem Solving
- Communication with Others
- Learning
- Spiritual Growth
- Rest, relaxation, "fun", and other hobbies
- Other

The point is... the list goes on and on and on... and varies for the individual. If we become too focused on one specific area, we become unbalanced, and other important areas of our lives and skillset will suffer.

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What about multitasking?

In my experience, its not a great idea and is really only an illusion that we can actually do it. We can only actively focus & concentrate our conscious mind on one thing at a time and do it well. If you multitask or combine tasks together, you may well improve in all the areas you are working on, but will develop much slower than if you focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking has also been shown in studies to impair your ability to recall information and experiences in the future. It very well may be that that one piece of information that you only gave 50% concentration on saves your life down the line... so why risk it?

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Strategies

So, how do we achieve balance in our often complex and time restrained lives? It can be overwhelming to think about it, but there are some strategies that we can use to help.

1) Define & prioritize what area(s) is / are important to you.

Consider what your mission or role actually is. What skills and areas are you most likely to encounter or need? It makes no sense to utilize your valuable time working on an area that you may never use.

For example, if you're an average armed citizen with a CCW, you're more likely to need skills in de-escalation and people management than you will being able to whip out your blaster and smoke-check six targets in three seconds. The same goes for medical skills. You're far more likely to need to know how to speak with a 911 dispatcher and initially treat traumatic injuries than you will knowing how to perform J-Turns and other CT Driving Skills.

This prioritizing will take some time. Really think about it, revise it, and revise it again. Make sure you're not forgetting any important areas.

2) Write Out a Schedule

We have to maximize the time we have.

Writing something down actually hardwires and changes the importance and meaning in our brain. It reinforces that they are tasks that must be completed. By writing out a schedule of when we are going to work on these individual areas, we provide structure and organization so that we don't end up multitasking or half-assing our efforts.

3) Set Boundaries

Learn to say No. Learn how to say no, and keep saying it.

Other people will demand our time and energy on a regular basis. Too often we become distracted by pressing issues and "emergencies" that occur in our day to day lives. As a result, we skip on our commitments, and our performance in the areas that we have scheduled declines because we don't find the time to put the work in.

I'm not saying to ignore "emergencies" that come up, only to judge if they must be handled right away and then return to your focus area, or if they can be comfortably scheduled before or after the times that you have designated in your plan.

Nobody wants to seem cruel or unaccommodating, but if you continue to give and give of yourself, without ever taking the time to grow and develop the areas of your life that are important to you, you will never ever feel balanced or gain significance.

4) Track your performance

This is another big one, and ultimately ties back to the #1 strategy of defining what areas are important to you and their hierarchy. You must track your performance. How else would you objectively know much or how little you are improving in all the areas of your life?

For non-quantitative skills such as relationships and spiritual growth, keep a journal and refer to it often.

For quantitative skills - (shooting fitness, etc) consider a spreadsheet or computer program so that you can visualize and easily compare your results over time.

If you're finding that your priority areas are beginning to suffer, or that you have reached an adequate level of proficiency in your areas, its time to take a few minutes and re-prioritize. This constant revision allows you to maintain your mastery of the areas you're focused on.

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Go forth - balance your life. Learn, grow, and be of service to those around you.

Comments & further discussion are always appreciated.

[GardoneVT]

"If something's important, you'll make it happen. If it's not, you'll make an excuse."

That's a corny saying I got from my .mil days. I understand your post and it's well intentioned, however-if an individual thinks something's important, they'll make time for it no matter the obstackles.

When it comes to building a skill set with firearms, my personal philosophy is that any individual -myself included-who carries a gun without the experience to use it well may as well be unarmed. If you can't hit what you're aiming at on demand , what's the point. You'll just die making a lot more noise.

Which is a major problem because the bad guy(s) won't be restricted by social constraints we will be. The asshole shooting up a school, or the loser with a twenty crime long rap sheet who keeps paroling out that kicks in your door with a long arm has all the time in the world to rehearse their attacks. You'll have seconds or minutes to counter their planned assaults.

If you don't possess an equal skill set or better both mentally and physically then those slimeballs, the rest of your life will be irrelevant-as you'll be severely injured or dead. Self defense with a firearm is an area where errors and mistakes can lead to long stays in either jail, the grave ,or a cell . I view it as mandatory to practice with my firearm as brushing my teeth or working out twice a week, and make time accordingly. My family won't be getting a knock on their door from the local Sheriffs office because Mr Dirtbag started a fight I didn't have the skill to win.

[David S.]

One of the most interesting things that I learned from ECQC was that the law of diminishing returns certainly applies to shooting skills. Based on the considerable weakness of my other skillsets, my mediocre shooting skills were well beyond "enough." I'm going to go out on a limb, considering the nature of this particular community, and propose that the typical armed citizen would be well served by one high quality, multi-day course per year, one or two well structured range trips per month, and maybe 60 cumulative minutes of dry fire per week.

Cheers,
David

[RevolverRob]

One of the most interesting things that I learned from ECQC was that the law of diminishing returns certainly applies to shooting skills. Based on the considerable weakness of my other skillsets, my mediocre shooting skills were well beyond "enough." I'm going to go out on a limb, considering the nature of this particular community, and propose that the typical armed citizen would be well served by one high quality, multi-day course per year, one or two well structured range trips per month, and maybe 60 cumulative minutes of dry fire per week.

Cheers,
David

Interesting that you bring this up. I have been thinking of starting a training journal titled something like, "The Sixty-Dollar Man - Training on a Budget" - With a focus on taking one year to train on a minimal monetary and time budget. The motivating factor for me, is exactly the focus of this thread - finding balance. I work 60-70 hours a week and by the time I factor in commuting, errand running, etc. I get less than 25-hours a week to work to spend with the wife, work on self-improvement, relax, read a book, work on shooting/hand-to-hand skills, work on getting fit, and even do day-to-day things like take a shower and go to the bathroom. So with the motivation of achieving some level of balance between my desire to improve personally and the very real limitations of time, something that I think is difficult for obsessive individuals (like me), I am thinking seriously about doing it.

-Rob

[Keltyke]

If you really want to do it, you will make time for it.

[BJJ]

Dan Gable is a legendary wrestler. I think he won a gold medal in the Olympics without having a single point scored on him during any of his matches. He is Not exactly the poster child for balance in life but it is has always stuck with me that he said, "If something is important, do it everyday."

[JAD]

Not exactly a poster child for tolerance, either, but one learns about heroes the hard way.

-- dg camp 1984, alumnus of dg's high school, went to Iowa during his tenure but didn't wrassle.

[Mr_White]

This is a tricky thing, solved only by recognizing why you are actually doing this study. For me it started with self-protection, and I worked toward a generalist goal for a number of years. Then at some point, I realized I wasn't continuing to do it because I 'needed' more defensive training, but because I had come to enjoy training, self-improvement, and cultivation of skill with a pistol. That's when I became very unbalanced in priority toward shooting skill. Everyone is going to have their own story on this.