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TED: Finding Balance

March 16, 2007  |  from never eat alone blog

I spent four days at the annual TED Convention (March 7-10) in Monterey, CA.  It was an amazing collection of people, including President Bill Clinton, venture capitalist John Doerr, producer J.J. Abrams, singer Paul Simon, Nobel prize winner Murray Gell-Mann, NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and a whole slew of politicians, executives, investors, and celebrities. 

One presentation I wanted to share with you was called "HOW DO YOU FIND BALANCE IN YOUR LIFE?"  I don't necessarily prescribe to all of the speaker's philosophies, but the points he made were interesting and I'd like to share them with you....

Successful people are not balanced, and that's okay.  In the early stages of life, most successful people didn't have balance and they were happy with that.  They were passionate, persistent and worked hard.  They were "Work-a-Frolics" -- work to them is fun.  They thrived on work and on pushing and were focused on success, but they weren't balanced.  They didn't focus on family or social life or spiritual life or community, etc. 

And it's okay to be unbalanced...but only for a while.  Moderation is for monks.  Very successful people have to work in extremes.  Take Richard Branson, for example.  He achieves great success and has great focus, but he also parties very hard and does his social things in a very strong way.  By doing them in extremes, they "balance each other out." 

I'm not sure that I necessarily agree with that.  I had dinner with Richard Branson the other night and we talked about these points.  He agreed with me that both behaviors are compulsive and at no point do you ever breathe easy at any time.

Some tips the speaker offered:

  • Find balanced moments in your life every day.  Get in that workout, take that run, get a yoga or meditation session.
  • Marry into balance.  Marry someone who is more balanced than you are and forces a level of that in your life.

And an additional tip from me:

Try blending.  Try taking the things you want to do in life, the achievements you want to have, and blend those with best friends and significant others.  Find ways to incorporate the two. 

I'll be talking about this in my next book.

Filed: Personal-Productivity