Living Your 3 P’s
By: Charlie Fusco
My messy journey as a work-in-progress mother, flawed wife, overly complicated woman, could-be-better friend, workaholic creator, and optimistic entrepreneur would have never led to my success if I had tried to live a balanced life for the last sixteen years. In fact, as a mother, wife, and a CEO, the whole concept of “work-life balance” seems counterproductive to me.
Consider a Balancing scale: you need to add or remove weight from either side until the two sides balance in the middle. When I set out to be a mother and run a business at the same time, it never occurred to me to put less effort into one side of my life so that a different part of my life was temporarily easier or less stressful.
Sometimes, my business is up and my home life is down, and vice versa. In my experience, the ability to seamlessly manage everything fluctuates. If you try to set priorities that promote balance, you will inevitably have to take time/energy/resources/emotional responses away from one or more areas of your life. You will do this because it feels less stressful and more in control. The danger of constantly adding and taking things away on different sides of the scales, so that everything in your life teeters ‘perfectly’ at that middle point, is that you can turn into the leader, inventor, business-woman, mother, wife, lover, friend and person you never wanted to become. This is the dark secret behind work-life balance.
In my experience, the peace women seek with work-life-balance is a mirage. By focusing on being stress-free, in control, and in balance, our lives get thinner. Focusing on being fully committed, laughing at our missteps, and being creative and nimble in the execution of our work creates a more robust life.
For as long as I’ve been a wife and a mother, I’ve been an entrepreneur. Sometimes I’m better in one role than another, but not because I gave one any less than 100% effort. When I coach entrepreneurs, I talk about the 3P’s – Passion, Play, & Progress. It’s how I plan my days so that I can feel good about every area of my life – even if it lacks balance!
In the early days of my business, I was so focused on getting it off the ground that I gave the majority of my time and energy to work. My son took up a huge amount of energy too. Work and motherhood were boiling over 100% of my time. So, I “temporarily borrowed” more time and attention from my husband. After all, we were married until death do us part, right? He should understand that I needed more weight on the CEO/Mommy side of the scale and less on the Wife side at that moment to feel balanced. This re-arranging of my priorities gave me more hours in the day, more focus on specific things, and fewer emotional distractions, so I could focus simultaneously on raising both a child and a business. The problem came when days, weeks, or even months passed, and the weight had not been redistributed back to him. My marriage became thin in every way because I wasn’t feeding it. I woke up one day with a booming business, a happy three-year-old, and a marriage that was crumbling. I may have felt balanced but only because I had made my marriage less important that my child and my business. That’s when I realized work-life-balance was a mirage.
I decided that every day, I would work a little on each type of woman I wanted to make up the entire package. I was already a mom, a wife, and a CEO, but I also wanted to be a passionate woman, an artist, an author, a speaker, the best girlfriend, and so much more. So I decided every day I would create specific plans to incorporate all these areas of my life into my activities – I would plan my 3Ps!
In the first five minutes I wake up every day, I am thinking about my 3 Ps. It’s a habit, a meditation, and a life line. I create a list of activities that will engage my personal life, my family life, and my work life – no matter how hectic my day becomes. I need to make time for all the women I am inside.
Play
It is important to play each day. Play keeps us energized, reduces stress, boosts creativity, and makes the arduous worth it. As entrepreneurial women, we abandon play before all else when we are juggling things in life. Playing is not selfish. It is a critical survival skill in the unbalanced life you will lead as an entrepreneur. Playing may take up anywhere from 5 minutes to the majority of your day, but you need to make sure to make time for it. Play with your kids. Schedule play dates with your adult friends. Play with your pets. Go to the beach. Book a last minute getaway. Exercise. Dye your hair pink! Embrace your inner Peter Pan. Tell dirty jokes in line at the grocery store. Whatever makes you laugh – do it! If you want to be inspired, stress-free, and motivated to tackle everything all at once, then you have to play every day – even when all you want to do is cry and hide. Think about how you will play each day BEFORE you think about anything else, so it doesn’t get deprioritized.
Passion
It is important to wake up passionately every morning because, without passion, you are no good to the world. Passion comes in many forms. It is what drives our senses, whether altruistic, entrepreneurial, artistic, or sensual. If you do not wake up feeling excited about the day ahead, then something is wrong in your business, relationship, family, or all of the above. Success and passion are linked. Find it. Engage in it. Share it. Be physical with it! It is any activity that gets your blood pumping and your toes curling, even for a short amount of time. Kiss longer. Have sex – again! (For me, these two are usually the first things I think about – even though I recommend thinking about PLAY first. We can’t help who we are!) But passion isn’t just about sex. Passion can be found anywhere and anytime. Wear stilettos! Cook a meal that must be served on beautiful plates. Write something scandalous down on a napkin and leave it for the right someone to read. Paint on a real canvas. Make music. Jump out of a plane. Go on a blind date. Drink whiskey! Run a marathon. Flirt with the FedEx guy – daily if you can! Take up a hobby that you aren’t very good at but speaks to your soul. Engage in activities that frighten you and push you outside your comfort zone. Squealing is passion in verse! Have conversations that push your buttons with people you admire. If you don’t feel excited every day when getting out of bed, you need a bigger Passion List!
Progress
It is important to identify specific progress you’ve made in your life daily. The more days you go without identifying progress, the harder building your business and life becomes. The progress doesn’t have to be major – just noticeable. If you don’t plan your progress, you may not be able to recognize it. Progress is tangible. Yes, Play and Passion are easier and more enjoyable, but before you get out of bed in the morning, decide on at least one thing you can do that day to create progress in your business and personal life. Make a hard phone call to an unprofitable client. Fire an employee. Hire a new employee. Meet with your accountant. Raise your rates. Place an ad on LinkedIn. Get to the gym for only 15 minutes. Say sorry to your lover for your part of the argument. Schedule the breast exam. Join the Mastermind webinar for a half-hour. There is no progress too small or too big as long as you are making it daily. Get these tasks done as early as possible in the day to help relieve stress, set the tone for the day, and to clear your mind.
Life is too short, business changes too quick, and love dies suddenly. You cannot afford to wait to start any part of your life. You need to act and react to emerging opportunity. There will never be a perfect time to start your business. Investing doesn’t get less risky. There is never a better time to become a parent. And falling out of love is easier than falling in love.
When I learned to exist happily unbalanced it allowed me to enjoy my failures, setbacks, and successes more fully without the stress and guilt of trying to balance every aspect of my life. Don’t try and live a balanced life by cutting out activities because you feel there is no time in your day. Make the time to nurture every type of woman you want to become. Get comfortable with being successfully unbalanced.
For example:
- Get a pedicure while on a conference call
- Watch your favorite movie while folding laundry and baking cookies for the kid’s school event
- Hire a cleaning service to free up two extra hours in your life
- Have a business meeting while pushing the stroller and getting your walk in for the day
- Have sex as soon as you wake-up and shower at the gym
- Hire a driver to take you on trips longer than an hour so you can work instead of fighting traffic
- Have sex as soon as you wake-up and shower at the gym
- Trade a Monday at Disneyland with the kids for a Saturday at the office
Find ways to combine your activities so that you can make time for everything. Make your day a game. Some days, you will be more successful than others at executing the 3Ps. The success secret here is thinking about them first thing every morning and learning how to juggle your time better.