When it comes to personal productivity and fulfillment, I have found my journal to be one of the killer features of my system that enables me to capture and clarify the more mundane and ambiguous items that grab and pull at my attention.

In Ready for Anything, David Allen’s follow-up book to Getting Things Done, he notes the following regarding the different levels of our attention:

We live and work on many different levels all the time. When one level is disturbed, it pulls energy and focus from the others, until it is resolved. When things are in balance, a natural and sustainable flow of creative energy becomes accessible throughout all endeavors (p. 83).

The trick therefore is to setup the tools to capture and clarify these open loops that occur on all the various levels and vectors of our lives.

Many of the more bold and courageous things I have accomplished in my life are a result of this higher altitude exploration where I use my journal writing to move from the abstract to the concrete. Despite the success I’ve had with this medium, I still have resistance to it. To combat this resistance, I have found that it’s useful to have a list of triggers or prompts to get the creative juices flowing. Here are 9 that I have collected over the years:

1. What is grabbing or pulling at my attention that requires deeper engagement and exploration?
2. Does it require greater control or perspective to release its hold on my psyche?
3. What is not on cruise control that I would like to get there?
4. What do I need to capture, clarify, decide on or handle sufficiently to get it off my mind?
5. What is holding my attention and energy hostage? At what level is it occurring? (projects I’ve committed to, responsibilities and areas of focus, short- and long-term goals and visions, life purpose and guiding principles)
6. What is taking more attention in my life than it deserves?
7. What distractions that are holding my attention do I need to release and reframe as an input that needs to be captured and clarified?
8. How can I responsibly unload and identify all of the items that are pulling at my psyche?
9. What in my current world do I need to accept and move forward on?

For more on journaling, I would make sure check out these great resources:

• Levenger’s Guide on How to Keep a Journal
• Free Article from DavidCo on Finding Your Inside Time to journal

What are some other prompts you use to capture abstract ideas that are pulling at your attention?

Photo courtesy of Renzo Ferrante

When we speak of balance and harmony in our lives, we often view it as an either/or paradigm between work and life: if I work too much, then I have too little time for my life outside of work and vice versa.This model reflects a singular vision of work where we are constantly sacrificing and battling between work and play in a zero-sum end game.

In his book Total Leadership, Wharton Professor of Management Stewart Friedman sums up the problem with this outdated metaphor for achieving balance in our lives with an image of two scales in balance. The problem with this metaphor, he writes, is two-fold:

First, it suggests that we need equal amounts of competing elements to create constant equilibrium, and for many people, equality in the importance of and attention to the different parts of life makes no sense. Second, it signifies trade-offs: gaining in one area at the expense of another…thinking about work and the rest of life as a series of trade-offs is fundamentally counterproductive.

This image of two competing ends of a scale doesn’t work for me because I rarely find myself in a situation where I’m in perfect equilibrium and all of the domains of my life (career, body, work, play, relationships, etc.) are perfectly in balance and harmony. In actuality, my universe is constantly in flux with a steady stream of data and input that constantly changes and alters my reality. What was true when I first woke up this morning was shot to pieces when I got into the office and started checking email and returning voicemails (new input continually creates cognitive dissonance).

With our dynamic lives we are often forced to juggle fast-paced careers with continuing education commitments, kid’s soccer schedules, social media, and a 24/7 on call mentality (yes, we want it all). We need a new framework for looking at balance in our lives that is not so dualistic and is instead reflective of the universal nature of work in the 21st century.

Friedman goes on to present a new model for work/life balance that takes into consideration these important elements. “A better metaphor for our quest comes from the jazz quartet. Becoming a…leader is anlagous to playing richly textured music with the sounds of life’s various instruments. It is not about muting the trumpet so the saxophone can be heard.”

The idea of each instrument playing it’s part not equally but uniquely seems to fit better with work in the new era. There will no doubt be times in our lives when the bass plays louder than the keyboard or the saxophone and trumpet work together to create harmony in their own ways.

The book is a great collection of examples of people who strive to achieve harmony in their lives. It’s an enjoyable read, especially for students of leadership and anyone seeking to change their frame of mind when it comes to professional and personal success (hint: they’re not mutually exclusive).

How do the areas of focus in your life work together to create harmony? What are some other ways to think of creating and maintaining harmony with all of the “instruments” in your life?