Feb
26

Temperature Check: What’s Your Quality of Life?

With the flu still sweeping through my office like the plague, it got me thinking: even without a physical fever, I’ve been feeling tired and stressed at work lately (as you may have noticed from the topics of recent posts), which has a negative ripple effect on all the other areas of my life.

In a recent White Hot Truth article about our relationship to sleep, the author quotes the following message:

“Tiredness is a kind of sickness…It is not a matter of how long we sleep that determines whether we feel tired. It is waste and negative thoughts and actions that create tiredness. Create positive thoughts and elevated actions and you will take strength from that, and your tiredness will leave you.” -Dadi Janki

It struck me that part of the reason I was feeling so tired was that I let work completely take over my life. I stopped doing things that gave me energy. Yes, work has been particularly busy and chaotic lately; but I have a choice in how I respond, and the more I let things that energize me fall out of my routine, the more tired I become, and the less able I am to perform high-quality work. It’s not a good cycle or a place I want to operate from, and it sets the wrong example for the people around me.

As they say, the first step is admitting you have a problem. After coming to the conclusion that my work/life balance was completely out-of-whack (despite my recent post on prioritzation), I asked myself three key questions to uncover specific problem areas and brainstorm solutions.

3 Questions to take your “quality of life” temperature:

  • What are the areas of my life that I’ve let slip?
  • How healthy are my current habits?
  • What can I do to replenish my energy and feel excited and happy with my day/week?

The last step toward improving your quality of life is commitment - choosing actions that you believe will improve your quality of life and allow you to feel healthy and energetic again.

10 Small Actions to Improve My Quality of Life:

  1. Exercise daily
  2. Get outside as often I can
  3. Drink more water
  4. Smile more
  5. Go to bed earlier, watch less TV
  6. Snooze less
  7. Engage in meaningful 1:1 conversations with people
  8. Multitask less. Focus on what I’m doing at the moment and enjoy it
  9. Take 3 deep breaths smack-dab in the middle of the day to slow me down when things get crazy
  10. Be nicer to myself.

Those are my quality of life improvements (I would like to note that they are working already!)…what are yours?

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Posted by Jenny Happiness, Health/Fitness, Life, Work Subscribe to RSS feed Print This Post Print This Post
  • tom
    I will definitely let you know Jenny, it should be sometime this week.
  • @Tom - that wide-awake-work-all-night-feeling-because-I'm-so-in-the-zone is the best!! I'm anxiously awaiting your blog re-launch - you'll have to tell me when it's back up :D Hope you're having fun working on the new version.

    @Max - thanks so much for your comment! I'm so glad the post resonated with you. Sometimes we can all use a good kick-in-the-butt to wake up and be more present in our lives. :)
  • Jenny, Thank You. Your blog post really resonates with me! These are great techniques to bring yourself back into the present moment. It's a great wake up call!
  • tom
    You know what Jenny, i picked up a great point from your post about tiredness.

    I noticed this recently, there was one day i was at my friends working on the blog, came home, worked some where till around 2am in the morning and got up at 6 am because i could not sleep and throughout the whole day i did not feel tired.

    So you make a great point and i think it makes sense to say that we dont need that much sleep, it is a matter of what we do with our time, if we make it productive or not.
  • @Ryan - thanks for your comment, you bring up a great point. I think it really does come down to balance and you're right, that might mean different things on different days. I like what you said about exercise and sleep. I could probably sleep more too, but it would involve giving things up that I'm not ready to do (like my side endeavors and evening twitter sessions ;) Your comment also reminds me that, as cliche as it sounds, variety is the spice of life. A little balance and variety go a long way!

    @jamie - thanks! loved your post today too - sometimes energy for me just comes from gratitude and redirecting my negative thoughts away from "I'm so tired, I'm so busy" and toward things I'm actually excited about and thankful for (of which there are many!)

    @tom - love the follow-up questions you included in your comment. Particularly for recurring issues, I think it's important to ask why. But I'm also of the mind that sometimes asking why something happened or came to be gets people spinning in circles, when what they really need is a proactive solution for how to move forward from where they are NOW (regardless of how they got there).

    And touche on the point about not turning to destructive behaviors (like drinking) to solve the problem. It reminds me of Zig Zigler's quote, "The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now."

    On the small actions, I have thought a lot about them - it's just not reflected above. For me, they are tried and true actions that I know have had very positive effects in the past. Glad to know elaboration would be helpful for you (and other readers) - I'll keep that in mind for future posts. Very true that each line could probably fill up an entire post :D

    Thanks again for the comments everyone!
  • tom
    Those questions are good to start with but it won't get many of us that far.

    The next thing to ask is why did we let those things slip? Is it lack of support, emotional issues, etc.

    How healthy are my current habits? You gotta be more specific, if its debt then you have to analyze and look at the numbers. How much you are spending, how much you are making, the ratio, the interest you pay on loans, etc.

    What can I do to replenish my energy and feel excited again?
    Sounds very broad to me, some people may go out to drink to get that energy, others may go out to exercise. That statement has to be more specific.

    10 Small Actions to Improve My Quality of Life, are great points to consider by you have to ask yourself why and what are the consequences if i don't do it or do something else.

    See you could even write about the myth of multitasking as a separate post. Same goes with the other points, it would be great to see more details on those points.
  • Jenny!

    Thanks for those questions.

    Got me thinking. It's always good to be reminded of these things, because so many times we let our lives begin to control us.

    See you Sunday hopefully!
  • Jenny,

    It just depends for me, but most of the time it balance of some sort. Sometimes that means watching a Gary Vaynerchuk video, getting pumped up, and spitting out some content. A lot of times though, it involves slowing down to read a book, chat with friends I haven't seen in awhile, and connect with new peeps.

    I exercise virtually everyday, and that's a necessity.

    I probably need more sleep, but alas, then I wouldn't be hustling, and there's too many opportunities just waiting for me to sweep up as all the the phony's get weeded out in this economy.

    Thanks for sharing this post. I think the 3 questions are a good approach, something anyone could effectively integrate into their own lives.

    Ryan
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