Running Head: MEMO 1 MEMO 2 Memo Name Institution To: Mary Lee, Life Coach From: Date: Re: Balancing between professional and personal life In the last several months, I have been having issues balancing my personal and professional life. I have been working most of the time during the day and sometimes it extends into the night. By the time I am done I am usually very tired and in need of some good sleep. The sequence has been repeating itself and I find that I have not been able to spend time with my family and friends. In fact, I hardly have time for myself. This has been so exhausting and I feel like I am drowning from its weight. This is not a personal problem as I am aware that many other people are going through the same thing. However, the degree to which we are affected by this problem varies from one person to the other. As a life coach, you understand my problem well and what I should do about it. I believe that this problem can be solved by planning carefully and being prepared always. Work-life balance is a real struggle and this is brought about by various causes. There are so many demands both at work and at home. There are deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, and family to accommodate. All these for one person and it becomes very difficult. Although I try to evaluate what I have to gain from whatever I do and if the price is worth paying, it is not easy to say no to these demands. Sometimes one just falls sick but they cannot call in sick because of the insecurities at the workplace. At this time I become unproductive but I still have to do my best and even though I try to accept the situation in order to ensure that I hold my energy, sometimes I just lose it (Dumas and Sanchez-Burks, 2015). Some of my relationships are quite unsupportive. Family members and friends are always complaining that I hardly have any time for them. I feel so guilty whenever someone says this to me. Despite working so hard at work, I hardly have someone appreciate me or tell me that I have done a good job. Nobody seems to care about all the sacrifices I make. There are a lot of expectations to meet and communication to do and to think that people would understand my situation feels like I am asking too much from them (Agarwal and Lenka, 2015). My babysitter quit a month ago and things have turned from bad to worse ever since. I have not been able to get a replacement and I have to take the baby to a care center which also consumes a lot of time. I think I have been so overwhelmed by issues that it is even difficult to think of a simple solution to a problem. Even a small problem turns out to be a very big issue and I have been trying to meditate but I always get distracted. I feel like meditation.

1. Running Head: MEMO
1
MEMO
2
Memo
Name
Institution
To: Mary Lee, Life Coach
From:
Date:
Re: Balancing between professional and personal life
In the last several months, I have been having issues balancing
my personal and professional life. I have been working most of
the time during the day and sometimes it extends into the night.
By the time I am done I am usually very tired and in need of
some good sleep. The sequence has been repeating itself and I
find that I have not been able to spend time with my family and
friends. In fact, I hardly have time for myself. This has been so
exhausting and I feel like I am drowning from its weight. This
is not a personal problem as I am aware that many other people
are going through the same thing. However, the degree to which
we are affected by this problem varies from one person to the
other. As a life coach, you understand my problem well and

2. what I should do about it. I believe that this problem can be
solved by planning carefully and being prepared always.
Work-life balance is a real struggle and this is brought about by
various causes. There are so many demands both at work and at
home. There are deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, and
family to accommodate. All these for one person and it becomes
very difficult. Although I try to evaluate what I have to gain
from whatever I do and if the price is worth paying, it is not
easy to say no to these demands. Sometimes one just falls sick
but they cannot call in sick because of the insecurities at the
workplace. At this time I become unproductive but I still have
to do my best and even though I try to accept the situation in
order to ensure that I hold my energy, sometimes I just lose it
(Dumas and Sanchez-Burks, 2015).
Some of my relationships are quite unsupportive. Family
members and friends are always complaining that I hardly have
any time for them. I feel so guilty whenever someone says this
to me. Despite working so hard at work, I hardly have someone
appreciate me or tell me that I have done a good job. Nobody
seems to care about all the sacrifices I make. There are a lot of
expectations to meet and communication to do and to think that
people would understand my situation feels like I am asking too
much from them (Agarwal and Lenka, 2015).
My babysitter quit a month ago and things have turned from bad
to worse ever since. I have not been able to get a replacement
and I have to take the baby to a care center which also
consumes a lot of time. I think I have been so overwhelmed by
issues that it is even difficult to think of a simple solution to a
problem. Even a small problem turns out to be a very big issue
and I have been trying to meditate but I always get distracted. I
feel like meditation time is just a waste of a good time (Agarwal
and Lenka, 2015).
I have issues with confidence and I am not very good at
communicating. This has made me not be able to talk to my
bosses at work or friends about the crisis that I am going
through. I understand that a problem shared is half –solved but I

3. have been having this doubt about whether anyone will
understand. I would not want anyone to think that I am
exaggerating. This has left me so stressed and the fact that I try
to stay busy to avoid this stress only makes the situation worse
(Dumas and Sanchez-Burks, 2015).
Today's working has become so demanding and although they
say that work and personal life are supposed to be complements
of each other, this is proving easy said than done. Work is
eating up most of our time and this leaves us with very little
time to spend with families and friends. The expectations of
families and friends are massive and most of the time we cannot
meet all of them. This is not to say that we are not trying. There
is so much trying but often we are overwhelmed. The
frustrations that come with realizing that we cannot achieve this
balance are even worse; we end up blaming ourselves and being
withdrawn from the people we love because we feel that they
will not understand.
However, it seems that all hope is not lost. Companies are
beginning to become aware of this pressure and they are making
efforts to help employees balance work and personal life. The
main aim of this is not only to make the employees happy but
also more productive. This is because balancing between work
and personal life is so exhausting that it has been noted to cause
a significant reduction in the productivity of employees.
Employees are now being allowed to have more free time
because working overtime is being scrapped off by many
companies. Companies are also trying as much as possible not
to exert unnecessary pressure on the employees. It is now upon
the employees to do their part to ensure that they achieve a
healthy balance between their work and their personal lives
(Zheng et al, 2016).
Proper planning and preparation is a great solution for this. As
employees with a lot of duties to attend to it is always good to
ensure that we manage our time well. This can be done by
knowing when to work and when to play. It is always good to
draw the line between home and work in order to ensure a

4. healthy transition between the two lives. Setting priorities and
sticking by the order will always ensure that we do not have
misplaced priorities. Also, having a schedule and sticking by it
is just as healthy. Procrastination is a thief of time and if we
learned to get things done without waiting to rush the last
minute we could achieve a lot. Eliminating disturbance and
focusing only on what is important will enhance creativity
(Zheng et al, 2016).
The other thing we need to learn to do is to mark our
boundaries; identify the common crossovers between personal
and professional life and only make those crossovers when
necessary. Be mindful of health because as much as working is
important, your health is just as important. We could also
protect our passion by treating ourselves to a break once in a
while. It is important to learn to say no and although it may
sound rude, you may realize just how much it can save you. Cut
off all things that are not important (Dumas and Sanchez-Burks,
2015).
Social media is a great invention but the fact that it can
sometimes be problematic is something that we cannot dispute.
Learning how to handle your social media is a perfect score. If
possible, have different accounts for your personal and
professional lives. Be clear and draw lines on how you handle
personal and professional data. Have a schedule for being active
online and stick by it. This way you can avoid being a victim of
social media eating up most of your important time (Zheng et
al, 2016).
Working from home is a good option to achieve a balance
between personal life and work but it is unfortunately not
always an easy course. To be able to successfully work from
home, set your time well, and work for hours that are realistic
and do not let your work hours eat up your personal life.
Dressing for work even when you are working from home will
help you achieve a successful transition from home to work.
Take breaks as if you were at work. you do not have to work
throughout just because you are working from home; health is

5. important. Avoid getting distracted by house tasks and
remember to reward yourself at the end of the day (Zheng et al,
2016).
Balancing childcare with work is the most important yet
difficult skill anyone could learn. Having a more flexible
schedule will help you a great deal as a parent. Consider other
childcare options like someone looking after your children
while you work. When working from home, find something to
entertain your children to prevent them from distracting you.
Consider being in the same room with the kids so you can
monitor them closely (Agarwal and Lenka, 2015).
Balancing between work and personal life is a challenge that
most employees face. this is caused by the many demands and
expectations both at work and at home. People try a lot to
achieve this balance but it is not always easy. All hope is
however not lost since most companies are assisting employees
to achieve this balance. Employees, on the other hand, can
achieve this balance by proper planning of their time and
always being prepared. Time management, creating boundaries
and sticking to them, working from home, balancing childcare
with work, and learning how to handle social media are some of
the ways that can help us as employees to achieve a balance
between personal and professional life.
References
Agarwal, S., & Lenka, U. (2015). Study on work-life balance of
women entrepreneurs–review and research agenda. Industrial
and Commercial Training. Retrieved from
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ICT-01-
2015-0006/full/html?journalCode=ict
Dumas, T. L., & Sanchez-Burks, J. (2015). The professional, the
personal, and the ideal worker: Pressures and objectives shaping
the boundary between life domains. The Academy of
Management Annals, 9(1), 803-843. Retrieved from
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19416520.2015.1
028810

6. Zheng, C., Kashi, K., Fan, D., Molineux, J., & Ee, M. S. (2016).
Impact of individual coping strategies and organisational work–
life balance programmes on Australian employee well-
being. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, 27(5), 501-526. Retrieved from
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585192.2015.1
020447
To: Danielle Lucey
From: Aubrey Patrick
Date: May 19, 2020
RE: Recycling Club Community Efforts
It has become an obvious concern that our stream of funding has
significantly decreased over the last couple of months as a
result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the club has
seized all of its plans for larger future projects including;
recycling bins in all public parks, the town-wide yard sale, the
5k for Earth Day, and the large-scale clean-up of what used to
be the skate park and public pool into a town garden.
With a growing restlessness of both the members of the club,
including myself, I think it is time to break away from focusing
on larger scale projects and organize a few small town-wide
events that all members of the community can partake in while
remaining safe and maintaining social distancing practices. This
will restore the momentum that the club has recently lost on
making consistent public appearances and bring the whole
community together to do some good during this difficult time.
The two events that I want to propose are “Plant a Plant Day”
and a “5k Cleanup Walk Week”. “Plant a Plant Day” will
comprise of the club putting together simple baskets comprising
of a planter pot, soil, and a package of flower seeds for delivery
to doorsteps with planting instructions and a positive

7. environmental message. The “5k Cleanup Walk Week” will be a
week promoted by the club to walk a 5k with your family in
your neighborhood and pick up as much trash as you can along
the way. At the end of the week, community members who
participated will place their trash at the end of their driveways
for pickup from club members, and the family with the most
trash pickup will receive a price.
In order to reduce club spending on these projects, as I know
that funding is tight and efforts are in place to reduce spending
as much as possible, I am proposing that “Plant a Plant Day”
can be promoted by our social media page as a “Secret Santa”
type of event in which community members submit a Google
Form containing the information of another friend within the
community to deliver a basket to and even customize a message.
The cost of purchasing a basket will be $16 to cover the entire
cost of its contents, and the club will have members volunteer
to help with both assembly and drop off on the day of.
The “5k Cleanup Walk Week” will not involve as much logistics
and planning, just social media promotion, organizing
volunteers for trash pickup, and coming up with a small prize
for the “winner”. This can be done at a very small expense for
the club, as the prize can be a simple $20 basket of
environmentally friendly products, and I feel this event is sure
to attract a lot of participation.
Due to the extra time that most club members have on their
hands at this time, I think that we can get the “Plant a Plant”
day organized to take place on May 31st, which will give us a
week for promotion and collecting the list of orders, and then
four days to go to the store and purchase all of the supplies and
assemble the baskets.
After that event, as it is a pretty quick turnaround, I think we
should take a few weeks before beginning to promote the “5k

8. Cleanup Walk Week”. This will give us some more time to work
out logistics for this event and not overwhelm the community
with social media posts. We can plan this weeklong event to
take place on the last full week of June, June 21st to June 27th
and go around for trash pickup and prize delivery on the 28th.
I think these two events are crucial to bringing the club back
into the public eye to show that we are not seizing small efforts
to create change during this time. It will also bring the
community outside and closer together to create a stronger
environmental awareness into the summer, where we will
hopefully begin to tackle some of our larger projects.
To: Tiger Shaw, CEO of US Ski and Snowboard
From: Grace Henderson
Date: May 21, 2020
RE: Equal Funding for all US Ski and Snowboard Athletes
Over the past few seasons of being on the US Ski Team I can’t
help but express my opinions on the equality of distribution of
athlete funding between the teams. Between the programs of
Alpine, Freeski, and Snowboard; the funding is very unequally
distributed.
The first issue I would like to recognize is the fact that US Ski
and Snowboard is a non-profit foundation. Most people do not
know this and assume that this foundation is government funded
like most other countries like; Switzerland, Norway, Spain, New
Zealand, Australia, Canada, and pretty much every other
country. I think the fact that we are not government funded puts
our team at a disadvantage towards the rest of the competing
countries. These other countries have the ability to train and
compete without worrying about if they can even afford to
travel to the next competition. Their countries provide them
with salaries, cars, and extensive social media exposure. This

9. puts our foundation at a disadvantage.
But some of the teams within the foundation get much more of
the small amount of funding we do get from donors and
sponsors. The Alpine program gets the most funding by far, but
why? The Alpine program is put on a pedestal; travel costs,
training camps, and everyday needs are covered by the
foundation. Meanwhile, the Freeski and Snowboard teams are
barely receiving enough money to attend these mandatory
training camps. We are losing money by attending these camps,
pushing ourselves to be the best so we can perform for our
country at a global level. Yet, losing so much money to do so.
Someone on the Freeski team who wins 2-3 XGames medals per
year only gets $5,000 dollars a year. While someone on the
Alpine team gets funded $50,000 for not even having a podium
result. I know you recognize this but I hope you can understand
how frustrating this is to these higher level athletes.
For most of us, this is our full time job, our main source of
income. Which basically means that if we don’t have a good
season, don’t podium, or don’t have the right sponsors. We are
at a negative profit for competing for our country. Which for
people on the lower levels of the team, such as myself, are
getting below $1,000 dollars per year and with my few podiums
this season and multiple flights to Europe and back, I am barely
breaking even every season.
This distribution system needs to change. In the 2018 Winter
Olympics the Alpine team had a total of 3 medals. The
Snowboard team had a total of 7 medals. While the Freeski team
had a total of 5 medals. So again I ask how is it fair that the two
teams bringing in the most medals are being funded by 5 times
less?
This winter when we had a discussion about this topic, I

10. understood when you said that it is out of your control. That the
donors are old, rich, white men, who have no idea about the new
Olympic Freeski and Snowboard disciplines. It makes sense that
they are directing their donations to the Alpine team because
that is the sport they know and love. But you need to do
something that doesn’t allow this. There needs to be a rule put
in place that all donations to the team will be spread equally
amongst the teams. If these teams are continued to be funded
unfairly these athletes will have no choice but to quit because
they can no longer fund themselves.
With someone in your position, you need to advocate for these
teams. Spread the word that we need funding. Let the people of
the United States of America know that the Ski and Snowboard
programs are a non-profit and not government funded
organization. We need their support to continue to produce
success.
Team USA is one of the strongest in the world. With some of
the highest medal counts at almost every Olympics. Imagine
how much better the Freeski and Snowboard teams would be if
we had even more opportunities and funding to train to be the
best team in the world. If we don’t make some changes soon
enough, there will be no Freeski and Snowboard athletes left to
represent this country.