Find the Perfect Balance

Posted September 14th, 2011 / By Timmy Allen in Columnists, Opinion, Resources, Tips

Something that goes overlooked quite often while on the hunt to be the best, most relevant person in your field is the time to step away from work for a bit and regain your life. I’m coming off a two month freelance hiatus and I’ve got to tell you how unbelievably refreshing it is to come back with a new found passion to do good work.

That seems like something a lot of us do to ourselves while on the grind to produce, produce, produce. I’ll speak from my personal experiences and assume that all, if not most of you, are the same way. Almost above all else we love what we do more than anything. The fact that none of us have to work a 9-5 doing data entry or waiting tables makes us very thankful and in love with what we do to make a living. I believe it is that fact that most of the time I will unknowingly give up basically anything and everything I’ve got going on to make sure that this privilege continues to pay out.

For a long time I had no idea how to correctly balance and make sure that work life and personal life supported each other and did not cannibalize each other. The great thing about graduating from Full Sail University is that if the school is good for one thing it is making you great at what you do while programming you to produce under any circumstance over everything else you may have going on. Which is also the worst thing about graduating from Full Sail University. I’m sure we’ve all sacrificed our personal lives in pursuit of that next great project or to finish up that insane deadline. How many of us have let work become all we do and think about? Personally, I have missed out on great moments with my friends and family in the name of “getting this done” and with the intention of “when this pays out things will be better”.

There is nothing more important in your life than friends and family and the moments you get to spend with them each and every day. You have to take time and find that balance of work and life and make sure that each gets the proper time it requires. Not to say that you shouldn’t ever work till 3am on a project that has to get done, but rather that if there is a time when that happens make sure you counteract that time spent another day and go for a bike ride on the beach or spend time with people you care about. What good is spending all the time learning our craft and creating the things we do if we’ve alienated ourselves from the people we want to share our work with most?

With all that I simply suggest to examine all that you’ve got going on and make sure everything is in balance. The worst thing in the world was getting burnt out and seeing how much I’ve removed myself from my friends and family. Take the visualization of balancing a pencil on your fingertip. One end is work, the other is personal life. You could put your finger in the exact center and the pencil would stay there balanced. However the Holidays are coming around and now there is more weight on the personal side of the pencil, so you have to move your finger closer and closer to that side to make sure the pencil does not topple over. Then the Holidays end and you’ve got multiple projects knocking down your door, now move your finger closer to the work side. The real trick is simply feeling out who needs what and keeping an even keel of everything. You don’t want to end up where I was to find you were wasting away in front of a couple of monitors and interacting with friends and family on Facebook alone.

Go take a break. Go hug someone you love more than anything and make sure they know. For crap sake, call your mother I know she’s worried. Get away and make sure the real people in your life come first. Balance.

Be good.
Timmy.

Hello. My name is Timmy Allen. I’m a motion designer based in South Florida. Not much bio to give at this point, but I look forward to hanging out and talking with each and every one of you then maybe someday I’ll have something impressive to say about the time I’ve spent on this planet. But so far, I started a show called “Keyframe” and I’m a part of Triune Films‘ internet show “Film Riot“. I am blessed to say that I get to do what I love every single day for a living. I love and talking to cool people. With all that, to be continued….