Mark Boulton

We’re all busy. I know that. Just indulge me, okay? 

For the past month, I’ve been chas­ing my tail and it’s begin­ning to show. The per­man­ent four o’clock shadow; the dark rings under my eyes; and the abil­ity to fall asleep at the drop of a hat—something I’ve never suffered with before. 

This morn­ing, I went along to the Cardiff Flower Mar­ket with The Wife at the incred­ibly ‘un-weekendly’ time of 7.15am. Whilst bathing in the early morn­ing sun­shine, I was try­ing to think about how to cre­ate more time so I can bal­ance off the crazy time of it recently. I reached some sort of con­clu­sion based on a book I read last year—The Power of Full Engage­ment—which was recom­men­ded by my best mate, Phil. The con­clu­sion I reached was; it’s not about how much time you have, or how you use it, it’s about find­ing bal­ance by adding routine and triggers.

Man­aging Energy

Power of Full Engage­ment can be sum­mer­ised as being about man­aging energy—not stress, or time—is the key to a bal­anced, happy life. Oh, how simple it sounds. By tak­ing note of your body—when you’re tired, unwell, or in need of a boost, whatever—and act­ing upon it instead of ignor­ing it. Many people sing the praises of hav­ing a 20 minute nap in the after­noon. This is what the book is talk­ing about, in part. Put­ting small routines and trig­gers in place through­out your day to achieve a more bal­anced approach to your daily life. 

Shoes on. Shoes off.

When I star­ted freel­an­cing this time last year, I worked at home. I car­ried on until a couple of months ago and, on the whole, found it quite easy. One of the little tricks I got from the book worked incred­ibly well in provid­ing a little bit of men­tal sep­ar­a­tion between home and work. 

In the morn­ing, I’d say cheerio to The Wife, put my shoes on and walk around the block. I did this every day. When I returned, I didn’t take my shoes off. That was key—I felt like I was walk­ing to work and whilst at work, I kept my shoes on. In the even­ing, after work, I’d take them off. Cre­at­ing this psy­cho­lo­gical trig­ger, by instilling a strict routine, helped me cope enorm­ously by being in the same four walls every day. Of course, now I’m lucky enough to be work­ing in an office 25 minutes drive away, so it’s not too much bother.

Where’s the Time

Like I said at the start—everyone’s busy. Being the Dir­ector of a small business—as many of you are—you’ll under­stand I’ve got quite a lot to do. I’m the sales­man, the account­ant, the recep­tion­ist, the designer/developer/art dir­ector, and finally the tea boy. I need some help. I’ve decided to hire another designer (I’ll be post­ing a blog post shortly about that—in addi­tion to an ad). I’m hop­ing that will help me with my time. And what time I do find myself with, I need to start man­aging it bet­ter, by man­aging my energy bet­ter. To do that, I need some routines and triggers. 

Mid-Summer Res­ol­u­tions

Nor­mally prom­ises to your­self are made at New Year, but I’m going to make some now. I need more bal­ance. To get that bal­ance, I need to start doing the things I enjoy again in my ‘spare’ time: Boxing/Martial Arts, Angling, Surfing/Snowboarding. These pur­suits have one thing in common—they require you to be ‘in the moment’. In box­ing, or any mar­tial art, if you’re not in the moment, you’re going to get hurt. The same is for surf­ing or snow­board­ing. Angling is a little dif­fer­ent; you just won’t catch anything. 

So, this after­noon I’m going to dust off the bag gloves and head down to the gym. I’m going to find a week­end I can go angling. But, before all that, I’m going to write a job ad for a designer…