The Four-Sided Triangle!

The Four-Sided Triangle ©
by Peter Sanderson-Dykes

This time, I’ll be sharing few insights from the world of coaching about how to better manage your time, energy and stress. And in order to do this, I’ll focus on a recent discovery of mine: the four-sided triangle! That’s right, the four-sided triangle and no, I don’t mean a square; that has five sides! Don’t worry, all will become clear very soon. Keep on reading!

Confused? Keep on reading...

I’ve frequently commented on the risks of burnout, and although most people in France now take this seriously, the number of people who suffer from this, or who know somebody who has had the problem, seems to be steadily on the increase. One of the factors leading to this can be the inability to switch off from work when one gets home. After all, it’s difficult not to read your professional emails at home in the evening or at the weekend.

So I imagine that most of you can sometimes find it difficult to balance your home life with your work life. But this work-life balance is not a binary affair as we often think since we generally have three different personalities.

The first is, for example, our professional persona. Most of the time, we try to project a good image of ourselves to our clients and colleagues. We would like to think they respect and appreciate us. But often, as I mentioned just now with the reference to burnout, we can use up a huge amount of energy whilst in this mode.

A second phase we often enter is the family persona. How do we behave at home? Do we give enough time to our partners, to our children…or even to our parents or grandchildren? Quite often, without even realising it, the family can be both enriching and draining. If you have children, it can be a great experience as well as frustrating if, for example, you have to check their homework every evening even if your working day has exhausted you. If you’re not careful, the much-expected weekend can be tiring as well!

The third aspect of our personalities we have is that of the friend…and this can be overlooked at times. I’m sure that, like me, you’re happy to meet up with friends for a meal, a drink… but how often do you look at your diary and sigh! You’re busy all next week, have a family event next weekend, and won’t be able to meet up until next month! It can be very frustrating!

Of course, this triangle is rarely equilateral; we’d perhaps like to think it is, but very often, the professional side of our life can eat up parts of the others. Or, in some cases, people come to work and bring their personal problems too. A client of mine mentioned recently that one of his team was regularly late and/or unproductive because he was finding it difficult to renovate and sell his apartment; he brought these emotions with him to work, and was unable to concentrate. And I’m sure that you have your own examples of colleagues in a similar situation.

So what about the fourth side I mentioned earlier? It is, in fact the in-side of the triangle! And this area represents ourselves and our own free time.

Quite often, this time is squeezed so much due to the other constraints of life that you think you don’t have time – or energy – for yourself. In some cases, if you do take some time for yourself, perhaps you feel guilty; you should be finishing a report, taking your children to the cinema, organising a barbecue for your friends…or whatever.

Experience has shown me that if we allow the in-side to become small and squashed, we’re in danger of running out of energy…and that can often lead to problems at work or at home, to burnout and other stress-related issues.

On the other hand, if a person has an over-developed ego, their in-side becomes so big that it can literally overwhelm the other sides – in other words, no time for family and friends.

As is so often the case, there is no “one solution” which fixes everything, every time. However, I do encourage you to seriously look at this triangle; are all the sides as balanced as you would like them to be? Are you able to switch off from work when you get home or stop thinking about home when you get to work? Do you have enough time for yourself, to do the things you like to do – or need to do – in order to charge your batteries?

I’ll come back to this issue again, with a few examples of how you can solidify this this fourth side, without, of course, damaging the other parts.

In the meantime, have a good look at yourself from this four-sided triangle approach. You may be pleasantly surprised, or, you may find a potential weakness – and if you fix that, you’re on the right path to strengthening your four-sided triangle…and there’s nothing wrong with that.