With help from a life coach, busy Bob Miyamoto finds balance

By Sherry Stripling
Seattle Times staff reporter

	MICHELLE KUMATA / THE SEATTLE TIMES
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The first is Miyamoto in a lawn chair, next to his family's new pond, an ever-ready scene because the "downright dangerous" hole that sat undone is finished at last.

The second image is Miyamoto's empty wallet — the temporary downside of ticking through a to-do list that before had only expanded, with some tasks sitting on it for a decade.

The third is his blood-pressure monitor gathering dust by his bedside, a change from three months ago when Miyamoto, 52, checked it every night to measure his stress level.

What changed? The basics of Miyamoto's life remain the same — he still travels too much for work, he still has more than his share of life and family demands. But by working with a professional life coach, Carolyn Fung, he's whacked a path through all the nagging, undone tasks that wore him out and impaired his long-term thinking.

He wanted more energy. He got it by letting go of worries. He wanted to feel relaxed in his time off. He got it by clarifying what he values in life and by addressing short-term concerns. Taking care of appointments with the doctor, dentist, lawyer and repair people brought relief because he feels organized, as if he's getting somewhere.

"The results have been fantastic," says Miyamoto. "Nobody had greater doubts about what would happen than myself."

	Bob Miyamoto

Now comes the real test: Can Miyamoto maintain these changes?

From here on out, he won't have weekly phone conversations with Fung. He won't have the spotlight of the newspaper shining on his life.

In other words, he'll be just like the rest of us. We'll check back with Miyamoto in six months to see if he's relapsed into Busy Bob. But for our third and final installment in this series, we sat down with Fung and Miyamoto (and his wife, Deanna) to ask point-blank:

What did he learn from this? What can readers learn? And how can he make these changes stick?

Learning to find balance

"It's really a discipline question," says Miyamoto, who came into this project scheduling even his home-life in 15-minute increments.

The problem with Miyamoto, as with most of us, was many, many aspects of his life are marked "high priority."

His parents are elderly and live nearby. He and his wife (who also works) have two teenage daughters, both with difficult school loads. Pre-calculus? Chemistry? Miyamoto is with his daughters at the homework table unless he's traveling for work, which puts him on the road for parts of 40 weeks a year. He creates projects and raises funds for the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory.

Miyamoto's biggest change: keeping focused on what he wants to achieve, despite immediate demands that crop up.

He's always hated to make written lists, but now he sees the value. It takes some of the stress away from trying to remember everything he has to do. And it provides proof of accomplishments — reinforcement that "the change in behavior results in a better life." He figures he bought himself six months of guiltless leisure time by getting on top of his task list.

He's learned that an hour planning can be more important than an hour doing, he says. Every weekend, he puts the names and phone numbers of companies and people he needs to reach in a folder so he can make those calls during the week.

Daily breaks also are important to create a sense of balance, Fung says. Fresh air? Short walk? Meditation? Listening to music? "Even if it's brief, this helps refuel energy and helps prevent exhaustion at the end of the day."

Deanna suggests another lesson learned: "Sometimes spending a little money will save a lot of time."

In their case, what they've spent will be offset, they believe, by what they've gained from refinancing the house and updating their financial plan — other items on their list.

Learning about himself

For one thing, Miyamoto learned that he keeps his life at home and at work separated better than he realized. He also started giving himself credit for his strengths, including discipline and an openness to change.

	KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Bob Miyamoto, whose work puts him on the road for parts of 40 weeks a year, goes over two weeks worth of mail that piled up while he was on business trips.

He answers many work e-mails at home, for example, but he gets as much done as he can before the rest of the family rises and then doesn't think about it after that. He's a plane ride away four or five days a week, but he strives to be home almost every weekend.

He's taken time off from work in the past 2-1/2 months to handle personal appointments. Before, he would have felt guilty about doing this; now he sees it as compensation time for weekend work and long days traveling.

"The bottom line is if I could work a 40-hour week or a 50-hour week, I'd certainly be in a lot better shape than what I do now," says Miyamoto, who also is making changes at work, including handing off more writing chores that bog down his time.

He's learned that he's wrong to think of himself as lazy. He has a strong sense of responsibility and discipline, and he likes to play. Three months ago, he so desired time off to relax, or at least not rush, that he wondered if he'd lost his drive.

"This might be true of a lot of people," he speculates, "but it's not being busy that I mind, it's that I don't want to feel pressured. I don't mind having something to do all day, but it's that sense that if I don't get this done now, I'm in trouble."

Fung, a former psychologist with two years additional training as a personal coach, clarifies:

"So there's a distinction between busy and overwhelmed."

"Right," Miyamoto says.

With Fung keeping him focused, he stopped overanalyzing each task and forged ahead. Before, no matter how much time he spent taking care of duties when he was home, he never lost the feeling he was behind.

"Now I can go, 'Ah, look at what I got done.' If I don't mow the lawn, I'll do it another day."

If you want a life coach

"You've got to be willing to change, and you've got to be willing to commit to that change long term," he says.

He believes he could put himself through many of the coaching drills now (asking himself what he wants, making lists of what's getting in the way), but he'll miss Fung's insight.

Set reasonable goals, he advises. Stay focused. Give yourself a reasonable timeline to meet those goals. And make sure the timing is right before you start a program of change. For him, it was the right time.

Year after year, he'd made New Year's resolutions to take care of items that were piling up. Then, when his parents granted his request and moved from California to be near him, he realized he had to become hyperefficient. In the meantime, he lost time for himself.

He was surprised and dismayed by the amount of work he had to do to take back his time.

"I walked into this thinking that the coach would do more for me," says Miyamoto, who quickly learned that he had to drive the changes or they wouldn't matter to him.

He did his homework, sitting down for several hours a week in the beginning to answer Fung's written questions. They talked for 30 minutes a week by phone and also corresponded by e-mail.

Coaches can cost $150 to $1,500 a month or more. Don't spend it unless you're willing to spend the time, Miyamoto advises.

Interview a couple of coaches. Make sure the two of you are a fit. He knew Fung was right for him when she didn't pressure him up-front to make major changes, which he knew he wasn't willing to do.

"She really just tried to listen to me," Miyamoto says.

People who know what they want — a new job, for example — would really benefit from a coach, he believes. He had only a vague notion of what he wanted — less stress when he had time off — and still his life is much improved.

Will these changes stick?

Life may ignore the fact that Miyamoto is a new man. He had a taste of that in early March, when he ran into some familiar problems — extra pressure at work and at home, extra pressure with health, homework and emotions.

Hold on, Miyamoto told Fung, I'll get past this crisis, refocus and get back to you. And he did, recovering well enough to tick off the last of his immediate goals.

Fung asks him a coaching question: You refocused by sending me an e-mail. What will you do when unpredictable things come up again?

"I think I'm going to write myself an e-mail when I find myself in trouble," Miyamoto tells her. In it, he'll express his frustration, lay out his goals and force himself to think it through.

Life balance is like walking a tightrope, always requiring adjustment, Fung says. As Miyamoto adjusts, he should keep his goals in front of him in writing.

During the past three months, he and Fung focused a lot on short-term goals at Miyamoto's request. When he brought up long-term changes, such as why he couldn't cut back on work travel even though that's one of his goals, she asked really hard questions such as "why?"

Why does he do things the way he does? What is he accomplishing? Could he do it differently? She was planting seeds, she said. Miyamoto says those seeds are in the back of his mind as he waits to see the "downstream consequences" of changes he's already made at work.

"I probably gave some flippant rationalization in the end, but they were good questions" about long-term changes at work, Miyamoto says. "I have to be honest and continue to ask myself 'Could I do it another way?' "

He asked one question of Fung that he couldn't have imagined asking anyone three months ago: What should he do with the free time he's created?

Fung's answer still rings in his head:

"Why do you have to do anything with it?"

Sherry Stripling: sstripling@seattletimes.com

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