Forget Trying to Balance Your Life: Try Stacking it Instead
Stop multi-tasking and employ this healthier alternative
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris Bueller
It seems like being busy and hurried are the norm these days. But when we’re hurried and rushing through life we can miss a lot. Most importantly, we can miss out on connecting with each other and God.
If you’ve tried to live a life of intentionality and purpose, you may have found that our culture has stacked the odds against you. You probably face so many demands each day that you rise every morning with that burning sensation in the pit of your stomach that screams, There’s not enough time in the day!
Parenthood, home life, work, hobbies, and church involvement may only be the top of your list. Add the aging parents who need care, the need to stay in shape and stick to a healthy lifestyle, volunteer positions, and maintaining a spiritual connection with God, and let’s face it — you’ve got your hands (and days) full!
You are probably looking for that elusive unicorn — the secret to a balanced life. I am here to tell you it doesn’t exist! Striving to do it all while maintaining some illusion that you’ve got it all under control is a recipe for burnout.
Approaching life with honesty and vulnerability by weeding out the non-essentials is a better way. Still, it’s unrealistic to think that we won’t feel overwhelmed at times or out of balance in some areas.
Stacking your life
One way to address the high demand for our time by giving our time and attention to the things that are important to us is by employing a hack called stacking your life.
I first learned about stacking from the Movement Matters expert, Katy Bowman. With the need for a healthy lifestyle as one of my priorities, I found I was struggling to incorporate healthy activities along with pursuing other hobbies and completing important tasks.
Katy’s ideas are meant to support a movement-centered lifestyle but I found I could use her principle of stacking in all areas of my life to not only use my time wisely but still pay attention to the people and things that matter to me.
Note: stacking is NOT multitasking
Multi-tasking has been shown to be detrimental to accuracy, mental strength, and quite frankly makes us look like scatter-brained, distracted fools.
The important distinction between stacking your life and multitasking is that stacking your life is about making one activity serve multiple purposes while multi-tasking is dividing your attention between multiple things at one time.
Here is an example of multitasking: writing this article while I keep checking my emails, posting to Facebook, and talking to my husband about our vacation plans. I’m not giving my best to one thing and either my writing will suffer, my husband will feel like he’s second fiddle to other things, or I’ll carelessly respond to something on Facebook and start WWIII.
Stacking, on the other hand, gives you one focus but allows you to meet more than one need. Stacking allows you to complete the necessary tasks while still making time for the important tasks and/or people in your life.
“Stacking your life involves the search for fewer tasks that meet multiple needs, which often requires that you’re clear on what your needs actually are. Once you identify your needs and which tasks best serve you, you can attend to, pay attention to, get involved in, and focus upon a single task at hand that serves multiple obligations.” — Katy Bowman
Examples of stacking your life would be
· Walking with a friend who needs to talk
· Listening to audiobooks while cleaning
· Gardening with your child
· Talking on the phone with a friend while you hang clothes on the line (try it — it’s a great way to slow down!)
· Listening to a podcast or teaching message while driving
· Reading a book while walking on the treadmill
But don’t use stacking as an excuse to cram it all in. It’s still a good idea to edit your life so you have less to do and can focus on what needs your attention without feeling pressured that other tasks are hovering over you like an impatient taskmaster. Saying no to some things so you can say yes to others is an act of self-discipline. Stacking your life can help you create the time you need for the things that really matter to you.
