Sometimes what you need to maintain work-life balance is to make a trade-off between two different kinds of work. My posts here on this blog have slowed considerably since sometime before Christmas. I went from averaging three posts a week to something like one a week — or less.

The thing is, I started a novel over the Christmas break. I wrote 12 and 14 hours a day, slipping it in between Santa Claus duty and cooking for our annual New Year’s hoppinjohn party. When I went back to the office after the holidays, I began working on the book in the early  mornings before work and on weekends. Which is exactly when I used to work on my blog.

Whenever you take on another work commitment, you might want to think about what you’re NOT going to do to make time for the new priority. That’s easier said than done. Usually those new commitments sneak up on you as a new client assignment, a special request from your boss, or an irresistible opportunity for advancement, recognition or visibility. They’re generally not the kinds of things you want to turn down. In an ideal world, you’ve got the capacity to take on more.

But if your plate is already full, you can’t keep piling on more and more without dropping something. Most of us have figured out by now that we can more consistently perform at higher levels when we avoid letting ourselves get completely exhausted. Also that reaching absolute exhaustion requires an inconvenient recovery time when we’re just not our sharpest.

Like they say, we all get the same number of hours in the day. Einstein didn’t get more than 24 of them, and neither does President Obama. Come to think of it, you can fit a lot into 24 hours. Most days, I feel like I have a fairly balanced life. But it stays that way only if I say no to some things, or at least put them on hold for a time while something else takes that priority spot.

Have you had to make choices in what work you can take on when? I’d love to hear what other people have experienced with work-work balance. Or if you tend to just take that extra work time out of your personal life hours.