Living A Life of Margin!

     The most difficult task in the life of any emerging leader is how to manage his or her time effectively.  The demands placed on those who have ultimate responsibility for the success of the organization often take precedence over family, health and other important areas of life.  The best leaders understand how to compartmentalize all of these areas so that no one facet of their life goes unattended. The problem in today’s world is that we are so pressed for time that we over schedule and over stress ourselves so much that the product we generate is far below what we are capable of.  We have been convinced that success is less about the quality of the time that we have available to us and more about filling every available second with perfunctory tasks that may not even be essential.  This in my view represents one the true failures of this country especially as compared to our friends in Europe.  They make sure to take time out to enjoy life and really live a MARGIN filled life.  

     In his book Margin, Richard Swenson says that living a life full of margin is the opposite of living an overloaded life.  The problem with this is that many people according to Swenson do not know when they cross from margin to overload.  Swenson goes on to make the point that we would all function better if we had a “flashing 100% meter” that warned us when we were getting to close to overload.  Instead we lives at 120% of our capacity and then we “wonder why the burden feels so heavy”.  The key to living a life of margin is to preschedule yourself in such a way that you live a life at 80% of your capacity.  This allows us to be able to react when life throws problems so that we can adapt to them and work through the situation with energy left in the tank.   

     The formula that is outlined in the book to calculate Margin is Power-Load.  Power is made up of factors such as energy, skills, time, training, emotional & physical strength, faith, finances and social supports.  Load is our work, problems, obligations & commitments, expectations (internal & external), debt, deadlines, and interpersonal conflicts.  When our load is greater than our power we go into a negative margin and that is when we begin to feel overloaded.  The opposite is also true in that when we increase our power and decrease our load we have a life full of margin.  This formula is pretty simple and it is easy to see that to live a life of margin we must increase our power or decrease or load or both.  This concept of negative margin is just another way of quantifying or defining what burnout is.   

     One key to finding more time in your life is learning to be able to tell people NO.  This may be painful at times but it is a key skill in taking back your life from the over scheduled mess that many of us fight with everyday.  This is especially true for parents who want to provide their kids with activities galore.  This often leads to family stress and causes a number of problems in many families today.  A better strategy might be to focus on a few activities that allow for the child to be proficient at a couple of things rather than master nothing.  Getting a handle on the family and work schedule will be the fastest way to get to a margin filled life!  

     Finding a way to manage life’s responsibilities in light of this if key to any leader’s ultimate success especially in the increasingly unhealthy situation presented to us in America today.  Living a life of Margin and more importantly LEADING a life of margin will foster good will and higher productivity among employees. This will also build a more unified and cohesive organization whose principles are truly founded on values that really matter the most.