No one dies wishing they had gone to more meetings

That pointer I found to Elizabeth’s post over at the Career and Kids blog got me to thinking more about balance and getting to the creative spot where we can do better than simply getting to the bottom of our pile at work.

Leaders find balance

In developing your own leadership abilities, shoot for balance: balance rest with exercise, work with play, professional with personal relationships, and so on.

This is harder than it sounds, and more valuable than you may think.

I am privileged to be part a fantastic organization that creates Good every day for our customers. To become, and remain, excellent the people doing the creating around here have to work hard and stay focused. That means they have to be fresh and on their game all the time.

All their work time.

Balance builds creative energy

Building technology is a creative activity. As a technologist, you are painting (or sculpting or scripting…pick your favorite artsy image) the future. Creation is driven by inspiration, and leading the charge to shape the future is about being inspired to explore fundamentally new directions. In order to open yourself up to this kind of inspiration, you have to have a variety of experiences, and to be open to what they are telling you. You can’t be fresh, creative, and focused if you are exhausted from over work, or if your edge is dulled by focusing on one thing for too long.

But sometimes you really are up against it with a big problem to solve and a deadline near. When your conscious turns up a big zero, you’ll be glad you’ve been leading a balanced life, because your subconscious is going to get you out of this pickle.

Pimping your subconscious

While you are consciously working on your problem, your subconscious knows what’s going on, but it recognizes that at least part of your brain is dealing with it, and so it spends its time lolling about, thinking about lollipops and big fluffy clouds.

But, if you take a break—and I mean a real break where you are completely focused for a short time on something else—your subconscious seems to freak out. Worried that the Big Problem isn’t being worked on any more, it kicks into high gear on solving it. You get all this work for “free.” The next day, or next week, out pops the solution while you are in the shower or just nodding off to sleep or in the middle of your backswing. Now this is the way to work.

The best way to make sure that your subconscious is pulling its weight all the time is to have a balanced life. Have a complete professional life, be dedicated to it, and give it your all when you are at work. Just don’t be at work all the time.

Finding balance for yourself

Have a hobby. Play a sport. Babysit your niece. Exercise. Spend time with your family, and turn your cell phone, and pager, and Blackberry, and laptop, and workstation off! Oh, and if you are a system administrator, the odds are fairly good that building a Linux cluster in your bedroom at night is not going to count toward your hobby quota. Do something different that uses different neurons, and preferably fire a few fast twitch muscles once in a while.

You’ll feel more complete, have a richer range of experiences, and acquire a more fully developed sense of yourself. And you’ll be sure that your subconscious isn’t living off the welfare system while you break your back to support it.

Yes, even you

And in case you are thinking: “Well, that’s all fine for the bourgeoisie, but I’m important! He can’t mean that I should tune out.” You aren’t, and I do. If you really are so important, then build an organization that supports you, not the other way around, and then do them all a favor by giving them a well-rounded personality to lead them onward, further and higher.

This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.