Everyone should think about maintaining a balanced life style. What does this really mean and why is it so important? It all comes down to maintaining your health over the long-term. This was explained to me by a senior manager who was providing some mentoring to me one day. I think that he thought that I was working too hard. He wanted to make sure that I maintained a balanced life style for myself and my family.

His guidance to me was based on the following. If you assume a basic work day is eight hours and you have 8 hours for sleep, then that leaves 8 hours for family and social activities. This is a pretty good balance if you can maintain this, since we all need on average at least 8 hours of sleep every day.

Balanced Life Style – Work vs. Personal Life

Now if work gets busy, maybe you are trying to get promoted and want to put in more effort. Chances are you are going to be at the office for more than 8 hours. Let’s assume 10 hours for the sake of illustration. We still want to maintain our time with the family and with our social activities. After all this is part of the reward and is fun as well for most people. If we work 10 hours and play 10 hours, then that only leaves 6 hours for sleeping!

Now once and awhile is really not a problem for most people. You are tired the next day due to lack of sleep. But then you work a regular day and get a good nights sleep that next night. The problem creeps in when working 10 hours at the office becomes a habit, a regular occurrence. The amount of sleep you get on average gets a lot closer to 6 hours instead of eight.

Balanced Life Style – Considerations

Now with lack of sleep creeping in, people are making more mistakes. They do not operate machinery or cars nearly as well. They have accidents! In addition their bodies do not have as much time to recuperate. There is a greater chance of becoming sick which means time off the job.

This is some of the best advice that I ever received. Hopefully other people will read this material and they will change their life for the better. Stay healthy, spend time with your family and work smart at work to succeed in life. The company will not remember you. They will not care about you if you get sick and have to retire early or quit work altogether.