Harmony vs. Balance
Harmony builds resilience for better performance
TIPS FROM
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
ADAM MARKEL
Work-life balance is unattainable. Focus instead on work-life harmony.
– Adam Markel, Keynote Speaker
We all believe that work-life balance is important for happiness and resilience, yet most struggle to balance competing priorities, constant change and overwhelming demands. Driven by the desire to perform better for our teams, clients, customers and show up as better husbands, mothers, daughters, neighbors, striking a work-life balance can be impossible.
For work-life balance keynote speaker, Adam Markel, the idea of obtaining a work-life balance conjures up images of the Flying Wallendas, a circus act and daredevil stunt performers, most known for performing highwire acts without a safety net. Walking a tightrope is a death defying precision task that for the average person is next to impossible to master. Even the Wallendas have died in the pursuit along the way. Seeking work-life balance can be much like walking that dangerous tightrope.
Instead, Adam counsels audiences and clients to seek harmony. Adam likens achieving harmony in life, in and out of work, to a recipe – too much salt or sugar can destroy the cooking. That doesn’t mean that the recipe doesn’t have any salt or sugar. Rather, the recipe has an optimal amount of each.As a keynote speaker, Adam teaches that striving to achieve harmony instead of balance can have a greater risk/reward tradeoff, isn’t as extreme and the reward is a much longer lasting experience.
As a keynote speaker, Adam reframes work-life balance as the ability to achieve an optimal amount of work, with the optimal amount of recovery, an important component of resilience. Instead of focusing on balance, Adam discusses structuring your life to create work-life harmony.
Harmony & the 4 Quadrants
Trying to achieve harmony in times of great change can seem impossible. We must attend to more than just our physical need for security to achieve work-life balance. To find lasting harmony vs. short lived experiences of “balance” we must pay attention to our holistic-selves — mentally, emotionally and even spiritually. If we don’t we slowly but surely leak our energy until we run out of juice. Just like our precious tech devices, if we fail to recharge we lose capacity and at some point things stop working altogether. And the cost is high, to your family, to your co-workers. In this video Adam talks about making a few small changes that are fundamental to recharging your resilience in order to maintain work-life balance.
Adam as a Work-Life Balance Keynote Speaker
Get Your Physical, Emotional & Mental Health
Working in Harmony
As a work-life balance keynote speaker, Adam recommends personal strategies he has used to attain harmony for himself. Some tactics include restructuring work hours and employing The Pomodoro Technique, using time limits to toggle between work and recovery strategies. Yes, this technique was named after a tomato.
As a keynote speaker, Adam strives to re-energize people and help them increase their overall productivity by outlining simple steps for recovery. He discusses the importance of holistic recovery rituals – physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual – as a way to achieve what is commonly known as work-life balance. Attendees will leave with tangible tools and tactics to evaluate for themselves and ultimately decide what direction or change best reflects their own personal expression.
Ultimately, as a keynote speaker, Adam wants people to take away that achieving work-life harmony is only part of the larger conversation around building overall resilience for your life. He credits millennials as the first generation in a while that appreciate the value of harmony; blending the goals of different generations in the workforce and even working from home more often. Work-life “balance” really comes down to finding a rhythm and cadence for your work and non-work activities and the millennials seem to have this down. It also means giving permission to yourself AND to others and removing the culture of shame for taking care of ourselves. This may be a tall order but Adam believes it’s possible and beyond reward.
I just experienced Adam’s presentation on resilience and change and as a leader myself, I thought it was truly inspiring. I can’t wait to bring some of the pieces I’ve learned back to my team. They better watch out because we’re going to change the way we do things!
– Participant, Ingram Micro
Create Harmony Even in High Stress Environments
As a work-life balance keynote speaker, Adam recommends personal strategies he has used to attain harmony for himself. Some tactics include restructuring work hours and employing The Pomodoro Technique, using time limits to toggle between work and recovery strategies. Yes, this technique was named after a tomato.
As a keynote speaker, Adam strives to re-energize people and help them increase their overall productivity by outlining simple steps for recovery. He discusses the importance of holistic recovery rituals – physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual – as a way to achieve what is commonly known as work-life balance. Attendees will leave with tangible tools and tactics to evaluate for themselves and ultimately decide what direction or change best reflects their own personal expression.
