I’ve been thinking a lot lately about balance — not the the physical act such as you might see displayed by a tightrope walker, but rather the art of picking and choosing between equally good alternative ways of spending my time.

I’ve mentioned before that the lovely and talented wife and I are expecting our first child at the end of September. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I’ve also mentioned that in late August I’ll be going back to school to start my quest toward earning a Ph.D. in Education Leadership and Policy Studies.

In addition to those two major life changes/adjustments that I’m expecting, I’m also already a pretty busy guy. I’m a member of and committee chair for a local chapter of Rotary. I coach a little league baseball team. I’m the ministry leader for the college ministry at our church and I’m on both the missions and men’s ministry committees. I’m on the Staff Advisory Council at the university where I work. My job, though flexible and something I thoroughly enjoy, involves occasional travel and working one evening a week during the school year. The wife and I both enjoy having people over for dinner and hosting people in our home. I have relationships with friends that are very important to me but that also take time to invest in. I like going to University of Oklahoma football games in September, October, and November each year. I try to go fishing at least three or four times per year. I have parents and grandparents that I want to spend time with. Depending on what season it is, I also like to run 30-40 minutes per day, three to four days per week. The wife and I love to travel. I like to read to and write. And the yard needs to be mowed and our cars need to be washed every now and then.

On top of those activities, it’s also very important to me be a good husband and father — one who spends time with and is regularly available for his wife and kids. I don’t want to be one of those husbands and dads who talks a mean game about quality time verses quantity time. I’m a firm believer that the only way to have good quality time with people is by spending significant and consistent quantity of time with them.

But there are only 24 hours in a day. I work 8-9 of them. I sleep 7 of them. Another 2-3 is spent eating and hygiening myself. Another hour is spent just driving to and from work each day.

Which only leaves about 4-5 hours discretionary hours per day.

Knowing all of that, I often wonder these days about how to fit the activities above (all of which I enjoy and am voluntarily involved in), plus being a good father and husband, plus time for spiritual discipline and development into that small amount of time.

It seems like I hear and read about the word balance from busy people a lot these days. Often it’s presented as the panacea for all that ails us in our lives.

We’re told we need to find balance. We’re told we can have it all. We’re told that it’s possible to excel in all of the different roles we fill and hats we wear.

But that doesn’t seem to jive with my experiences. In fact, it seems like the more things I add to my life, the less focused and invested I am in any of them.

I once heard a really successful man, who by all accounts was at the top of his game in business and was also a great family man, speak about this stuff. When it was time for questions, someone asked him about his work/life balance.

His answer: there’s no such thing as balance. He said that if you want to be successful in life, you need to be very careful about how you choose to spend your time. He talked about how he had absolutely no hobbies and how he had very few commitments outside his family and his work. He did not play golf on the weekends. He did not volunteer in the community. He worked and he spent time with his family. When he was not doing one, he was doing the other. Nothing else.

That was several years ago, but his response has always stuck with me. For him, success in life was more about CHOOSING than it was about BALANCE. If you’re willing to make the difficult decision of CHOOSING to sacrifice spending time on things that (though good) are less important than what you really want to be spending your time on, you don’t have as much to BALANCE. If you’re willing to CHOOSE the two or three things in life that are most important to you and only focus your time on those few things, BALANCE isn’t quite as necessary.

I’m still not sure how I feel about all of that, but I know that I don’t like to choose. If I see something worthwhile and good that I want to be involved in, I try to be involved in it. At least that’s how I’ve always operated in the past.

In the past few months, I’ve stepped down from one committee I was involved in my community and one committee I was involved in at church. And though I hated walking away from both of them, they weren’t priorities for me and so I needed to get them off my plate to leave more room for the things that are.

I’ve still got a long way from living the ideal of the man who only spent his time working and with his family, and I’m not even sure I’d label it “ideal” but what I do know is that I agree that balance is a myth.

I think it’s an excuse that busy people use to help ease their guilt about not being able to give their all to any one particular area in their life.

Moving forward and as I try to make more decisions about how I choose to spend my time, my priorities are: my faith, my family, my health, and my friends.

I don’t want to achieve balance. I want to be a completely sold out to being the best Christian, father, husband, friend, and man that I can be. In order for that to happen, I’ve got some tough decisions to make.

More on this subject later.