Welcome reader! Just Thoughts is for modern-day leaders who want to think better about business, leadership, and entrepreneurship. This article's Content is “handwritten” (highlighted when not) and co-piloted with Grammarly’s spell-checking and rephrasing for tone of voice.
This edition is an AI-generated audio summary (with the help of NotebookLM) of three pieces of writing;
Finding Balance and Purpose #1 - featured in this edition, written in 2019
Finding Balance and Purpose #2- Exits for now on the Wayback time machine, written in 2021.
Finding Balance and Purpose #3 - Published last week here on substack
The following was the first long-format text I posted publicly on Medium in 2019 (the corrected date from the previous post). My colleague, Siiri Hakulinen, working on employer branding at Smartly.io, copyedited it at the time.
It has been lost on the Internet for a few years, but I found the original version on my Google Drive. Enjoy the read!
Finding purpose and balance in life #1
When I was 16, all I wanted to do was play basketball. I practiced two, sometimes three, times a day for two hours, six days a week, eleven months a year, and, on average, 70 games a season. I defined myself as a basketball player.
At 18, I cried after a game for no apparent reason. I was exhausted, and basketball, once my joy, had become a burden. My crying after the game marked a turning point, sparking a quest for balance and purpose.
The moment described above was the first time I had enough of something, and my quest to find balance began. It wasn’t easy because I am an achiever. As I used to say, “It’s not whether you burn out or not; it’s about how quickly you can recover.” I like to believe I’ve become much wiser since then.
After the breakdown, my coach advised me to take a break and do something else. So, I worked at my godmother’s restaurant for three weeks, mostly cleaning dishes.
Looking back, this is where I first realized my passion for basketball, but it didn’t serve any real purpose in my life. It was something I enjoyed, but it wasn’t who I was. I also couldn’t answer the question, “Why?" Why did I want to invest so much effort into becoming a better basketball player? I loved basketball and still do, but what did I hope to achieve?
Later in life, I realized that passion without purpose leads you nowhere. Without purpose, passion turns into movement without direction. Thus, I embarked on a journey to find purpose and better balance basketball and other aspects of life.
Balancing a scale in the real world is impossible.
The concept of balance in life intrigued me. It was far from easy. Juggling school, basketball, family, and social life felt like a constant struggle. I often felt lost, fearing I was neglecting one area for the other.
When I hear people talking about work-life balance, they often describe it as a scale. You’re trying to balance two or more things, and when you think you’ve got it right, something beyond your control pushes it off balance. You must put much effort into getting the scale tips right again. It seems like an impossible task.
Since I viewed balancing a scale as an impossible task, in reality, I rationalized my burnout. Those striving to invest everything in life and its challenges will inevitably tip the scale. Hence, what mattered most was how quickly one could return the scale to equilibrium.
Work-life balance is not a scale. It’s a spinner.
A few years ago, I had a revelation about balance. I shared this with a friend who was also struggling to find balance. We concluded that balance is not about juggling a scale but spinning a spinner. Unlike the scale, the spinner finds balance through constant movement around a single focus point.
A spinner balances by moving around a single point of focus. While balancing a scale requires avoiding movement, constant movement gives the spinner its balance. Movement also protects the spinner from tipping over if external forces disrupt it, whereas the scale will lose balance by the slightest touch.
The point of focus should be on your purpose in life, combined with your priorities. If you see balance as a spinner, you only need to know when to pick it up, as the spinner will eventually stop spinning and fall. You want to avoid this because it falls and will lose its focus point before it does.
Lifting the spinner allows you to pause and evaluate where to direct its focus next. Additionally, each time you set the spinner in motion, you enhance your skill in achieving the correct spin. The axis focal point represents your priorities, enabling you to spin without wobbling, while the focus point signifies your purpose.
The first time you try, the spinner may fall immediately, wobble, or move around. However, the more you practice, the longer it will spin and stay where you want it. Early in life, you’ll likely get your priorities straight as you’ll learn to make it spin without wobbling before discovering your purpose. The spinner may drift across the surface, which might be desirable initially, but getting it to spin where you want will require plenty of trial and error.
Furthermore, your passion is the tenacity you try to get it right and the force you set the spinner to spin. As mentioned earlier, without purpose, passion is just movement without a goal. The consequence of having passion without purpose means that you waste the effort if you have the spinner spinning where you don’t want it to. You want to know where and why you set your spinner to spin.
What makes my spinner spin?
You may wonder how I find my purpose and set my priorities. To know who you want to be, you need to understand where you came from and, more importantly, find peace with your past. I began a simple self-reflection exercise each year. I write essays titled “Who I Am?” jotting down everything that comes to mind. Afterward, I set it aside and only revisit it after writing the next one, comparing the latest to all my previous writings. This practice of self-reflection has been instrumental in my personal growth and evolution of thinking.
Four years ago, during my travels to Japan, I added another element to the exercise: reflecting on four questions defined by the Japanese word ikigai. If translated into English, Ikigai means "reason for being." One Western interpretation of ikigai includes four questions: What do I love? What does the world need? What am I good at? And what can I get paid for? According to the concept of ikigai, your reason for being exists at the intersection of these questions or in the collective sum of these ideas. In other words, it’s a way to search for your purpose. I should mention that your ikigai changes over time through your life experiences and environment, much like a spinner that either moves or is placed on new focus points.
During my annual self-reflection exercise, I write down responses to these prompts, typically phrases that begin with “I love,” “The world needs,” “You can pay me to,” and “I’m good at.” With these questions, I calibrate my purpose. Only by reflecting on these do I write my essay on “who I am.” I’ve realized that my purpose, as I define it today, is “helping individuals, teams, and organizations be the best they can be.” Therefore, for now, my focus is on this objective.
Keeping my spinner from wobbling.
I still haven’t addressed my priorities; it’s hard to focus on my purpose without them. The spinner will wobble and likely fall much sooner if you don’t have priorities to keep it steady. Three years ago, I read the book *The Hard Thing About Hard Things* when I found myself in a leadership role for the first time, with countless individuals looking to me for answers. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, so I sought answers in literature.
Inspired by Ben Horowitz's writing, I formulated my priorities. They have since guided me in choosing how I spend my time:
1. Family
2. People
3. Business / Expertise
4. Finance
If you don’t include finance in your priorities, you will run out of money, which brings about different problems, limiting the amount of freedom you can act with. Hence, you should know how you can make money, and everyone in your organization should know how the organization makes its money, too. If you take care of your business and your organization, the money will take care of itself.
If your business is poor, the only thing that will fix it is the people, so before you take care of any operational problems, you should always take care of your people. Similarly, if your expertise doesn’t cut it, you should find people to help you. Others are also more likely to help you if you allow them first.
Finally, if you can’t help the people around you, their family and friends may be able to assist, which also applies to you. Therefore, you should always prioritize taking care of your family and the key relationships in your life before attending to anything else because only by taking care of yourself can you take care of others. There’s a reason flight instructions tell you to put on the gas mask for yourself before assisting others. If you don’t survive, they most certainly won't, and there’s nothing more deadly in this world than loneliness. Well, at least for me, there isn’t.
While doing my most recent self-reflection, I realized that the common thread among my life choices is a need for a strong sense of belonging—to a family, a team, a student union, people at events, an organization, or a community. Without this sense of belonging, I disengage and stray from my purpose. When my sense of belonging is strong, my priorities align with my purpose. That's when it feels like my spinner can spin endlessly without needing to be picked up because there is no longer any friction.
What’s next?
The spinner analogy, the search for purpose, learning from literature, and continuous self-reflection helped me navigate the complexities of life. I’ve decided to write this article and share it with a broader audience because I think writing aligns with my ikigai. However, it’s also possible that this is just the start of my realization that none of this sense-making truly matters. Perhaps the search for meaning is futile in a life so brief compared to the vastness of time, so we should try to enjoy each moment while it lasts.
These are my reflections on balance and purpose. What’s your opinion? Do we need purpose in life to find balance? Do we need balance to find purpose? Do we need any of the two to be content in life? If you liked this article, please challenge me to write more.
Share this post