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How Are Your Eggs Spread?

November 10, 2004

You have forty eggs and four baskets. The baskets are labelled:

• WORK
• FAMILY
• RELATIONSHIP
• SELF. 

Your task is to allocate the eggs to the baskets, in proportion to how you've actually spent your energies and time over the past six months. Please do this now, before reading on.

Countless professionals have carried out this exercise in retreats I've run over the years. What I've noticed is this:

1.   Many - no, most - successful professionals allocate hardly any eggs to their RELATIONSHIP and SELF baskets: perhaps only two or three to both baskets combined.

2.   Their FAMILY basket gets a slightly larger (though usually still meager) allocation.

3.   Their WORK basket is typically filled to overflowing.

4.   By and large, these professionals report a high level of dissatisfaction with their working lives.

5.   Some of their colleagues allocate a lot more eggs to the RELATIONSHIP and SELF baskets. These guys are no less successful in their careers - indeed they are often more successful. And they are far happier.

Hmmm. I wonder if there's a moral in there somewhere.

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