The tedium of planning a meeting is challenging, stressful and engaging all at once. It often feels like planning an event takes over your life, whereby the rest of your life has to be put on hold so that you can design an epic event.
When you are there at a conference, it is a real adrenaline rush. It is one of the few careers where you get to see the fruits of your labor. Because watching people interact, learn and grow is so rewarding, to know that you made that happen even more meaningful.
Meeting Planners Tips to Help with Work- Life Balance
Balance.
You really can't go around the clock in planning meetings, if there is no downtime. The deadlines and workloads are relentless. Remember to prioritize family, friends and other important things too. When you start your day, consciously build in balance. How will you make sure you connect with family? How will you eat properly and get exercise and enough sleep? If we don't do these things eventually our sense of balance can fall out of whack.
Stay Focused.
Meeting planners I work with say it helps to stay focused on what the goal is and work from there. When it comes down to it, meetings change conversations and solve problems and play a vital role in an industries development. If you are clear on the goal for your event, you know what to say yes to and when to say no. I like to start my day with three main accomplishments that must be completed. Before I launch into my day, I review these and carve out time to finish them. Planning a meeting has a way of stealing your day away, as you caught up in unexpected phone calls, details and changes. Staying Focused is Critical.
Play.
Remember that play helps keep teams happy and keep cultures fresh, make sure you schedule enough fun into your schedule. It will balance your perspective and help maintain sanity. Laughter and play activate different regions of the brain that help make us more focused, productive and innovative. If you laugh more often, you drastically decrease stress levels and increase endorphins, the feel-good hormones. Endorphins are good at countering and busting stress levels.
As a funny motivational speaker, I remind people that laughter is a medicine that is free, fun, fast and completely legal. Don't take this incredible internal resource for granted!
