work/life balance

It’s essential that people work a sensible number of hours. If you’re putting in 50, 60 hours a week or more, then there will be people in your organization who will feel that they should, too. But that will create inner turmoil, because they will be torn between what they perceive as your expectations for them and the responsibilities and, indeed, desires they feel towards their families, and even their personal health.

Don’t force your employees to make a choice. Show them that work/life balance is so important that you practice it as well.

Morag Barrett

6 steps to great leadership. CIO. 8/10/2015

if I do not exist intact

The Los Angeles Times assigned writer Paul Dean to do a piece on Watterson in the spring of 1987 that they hoped would be a definitive profile. In a way it was, but not in the way they had imagined. The resulting article, “Calvin and Hobbes creator draws on the simple life,” found Watterson with his hackles raised. “Calvin and Hobbes will not exist intact if I do not exist intact,” Watterson told Dean. “And I will not exist intact if I have to put up with all this stuff.”



Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip by Nevin Martell. Continuum Intl Pub Group, 2010 p.94

Occasionally we find some who become so energetic in their Church service that their lives become unbalanced. They start believing that the programs they administer are more important than the people they serve. They complicate their service with needless frills and embellishments that occupy too much time, cost too much money, and sap too much energy. They refuse to delegate or to allow others to grow in their respective responsibilities.

As a result of their focusing too much time and energy on their Church service, eternal family relationships can deteriorate. Employment performance can suffer. This is not healthy, spiritually or otherwise. While there may be times when our Church callings require more intense effort and unusual focus, we need to strive to keep things in proper balance. We should never allow our service to replace the
attention needed by other important priorities in our lives.


M. Russell Ballard, "O Be Wise," Ensign, Nov. 2006, 18

Elder Scott said sometimes to magnify your calling is to do less, not more.(See Richard G. Scott, "The Doctrinal Foundation of the Auxiliaries," Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting, Jan. 2004, 7.) You've brought more focus to it, you've exercised better judgment. You've increased the quality, but the sheer mass may be smaller, not greater. That's an equally liberating thought, I think-not to shirk, not to be a slacker, but to really, seriously look at the big picture, including the big picture of the family, and maybe sometimes do less.


Elder Holland. Roundtable Discussion (Dallin H. Oaks, Jeffrey R. Holland, Julie B. Beck, Susan W. Tanner, Cheryl C. Lant) - Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting: Building Up a Righteous Posterity, February 9, 2008