(Photo by mnemophobe)

In this day and age, most of us are wearing many hats at the same time. At the most basic level, you are someone’s son/daughter, boy/girl friend, husband/wife, father/mother, and also your professional role. For some, the list of roles that you take on in life is even longer; but the most basic list alone is already a great challenge to juggle.

Each of these roles places many demands for your time and energy. Sometimes, these demands conflicts with each other and you find yourself stuck in between, trying to fulfill your obligations to these roles at the same time.

One common challenge is being a working mother. The needs from your family and your career places huge demands on your attention, time and energy. How do you manage between a forthcoming product launch (which requires you working late nights), and spending quality time with your husband and kids?

Another common challenge; how do you spend quality time with friends and maintain frequent contacts, while you are busy building (or slogging) a high-flying career?

Is it true that you cannot have your cake and eat it? Well, I like to believe that you can. As long as you have the correct mindset, knowledge and tools. By the end of this article, you will learn the steps necessary to focus on the different important roles in your life, and to be able to successfully balance between the demands of these roles.

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This blog is about leading a balanced life focusing on career, relationships and money. You can read more about balancing your life here. These articles are written for you. If you find them useful, feel free to subscribe for regular updates as new articles are posted. It's FREE. :)

A few days ago, my friend went for an interview at a local MNC. At the office, she was received by a young HR executive, who led her to the meeting room for the interview. However, upon arrival at the meeting room, the HR executive saw that the meeting room was occupied by a group whose meeting was still in progress. The HR executive hesitated on interrupting the group inside and asked my friend to wait a little while for the meeting inside to finish.

After five minutes passed, my friend asked the HR executive “did you book the meeting room”?

“Yes I did,” replied the HR executive.

Then, it was obvious to my friend that the group’s meeting had overrun, and are oblivious that they are eating into someone else’s time slot. “Why don’t you knock on the door and let them know you need to use the room?”

The HR executive seemed irritated by my friend’s prompting, and looked undecidedly through the gap on the glass door, into the meeting room; afraid that she’ll draw attention to herself. Finally, after another minute of hesitation, the HR executive said “I don’t have the authority, I will get my manager here. She will have the authority to ask them to leave.”

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Photo by Hugo

Have you ever wonder what is the secret behind professional success, and what does it take to climb up the corporate ladder to reach the C-suite? Well, I like to share 9 very good tips from an article from CIO.com that I read. The article talks about qualities of a good CIO, and how following these tips, an IT professional can work towards becoming a potential CIO. Although it was originally targeted at IT professional, I feel that the applications of these tips can be more general and broader than it intends to be; and it can be applied to any functional managers like HR, Finance,Operations etc.

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