I've been thinking about balance a lot this week. Not just the work-life balance issues that fill the "lifestyle" magazines, but how I balance the various elements of my work and home life themselves.

If you know anything about the Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator, I'm a bid ol' J. I practically break the J scale. That means I like plans and structure and closure. Leaving things open-ended makes me very uncomfortable. It also makes me a very good planner (as regular readers of this blog know). I can still be spontaneous, but I do like to plan.

However, I have noticed a significant downside to my temperament. I can be overly focused on one or two tasks, pursuing them exclusively until finished. That single-minded pursuit can throw me off balance and put me behind schedule on many other things. then, I have to focus on those other things exclusively, creating an endlessly repeating cycle.

What about rest and fun? It might become an obligation or it might get eliminated. When I eliminate rest for too long, I crash and just don't do anything for a few days — putting me behind on the things I need to do and setting up another cycle.

See the difficulty?

Since we're less than 4 weeks from the beginning of the new year, I'm thinking seriously about steps I can take to break this cycle. If you have ideas, I'd love to haer them