Achieving balance means taking action. Put into place, every day, some simple habits and routines that will help you achieve the goals you’ve prioritized.

One of the things I learned some time ago was that to achieve balance, I need to take action.

Toward that end, I set up a simple system of daily conventions: some simple habits and routines to practice every day to help me achieve the goals that I had prioritized.

One thing that I do every day is to phone a friend. Some days I reach voice mail, other days I catch someone in the middle of something and wind up letting them go, and some days I have a wonderful conversation that lasts 30 or 60 minutes.

This is an easy way for me to keep in touch with those who are most important to me without falling into the trap of let’s have lunch or we really should get together for dinner sometime and then never finding the perfect time on our schedules when we can set aside 2, 3, or more hours for an entire evening. It also makes it more likely that exactly such a thing will happen: our relationships will grow instead of us feeling that we’re barely hanging on; we will find the time to get together face-to-face.

This is just one example of using daily conventions to achieve a desired goal. I’m sure that you can come up with many more if you try for a few moments.