In the September issue of Prime Business Alert!, I introduced you to my perspective on work/life balance: what it is, the causes of work/life imbalance, and the basic process for how you can create better balance in your work and personal lives. This issue will focus on specific and practical strategies you can use to actually establish better work/life balance.
Warm Fuzzies
If your life is out of balance, perhaps too many hours and too much energy devoted to your work and not enough time and energy available for other important aspects of your life, ask yourself what is missing. I call these the ‘warm fuzzies,’ namely, what it is that makes you feel happy and balanced. Warm fuzzies can include exercise, good food, time with family and friends, and cultural or religious activities.
Because you may have considerable commitments at work that are unavoidable and there only so many hours in the day, you may not realistically be able to fulfill every warm fuzzy. But with clarity of your warm fuzzies, you can then ask yourself which you value most and want to set as your priorities as you work to gain better work/life balance.
The Family Factor
If you are married or have a family, you add another element to finding work/life balance. You can’t just cater to your needs, but have to add the needs and priorities of your spouse and children to the mix.
You can best include your family’s needs into your efforts for work/life balance with clear and open communication. When you listen to their concerns and show respect and understanding, you can create a partnership that can work together to meet everyone’s needs (remind yourself that when your life is tilted too heavily toward work, your family’s lives are likely out of balance too).
Prioritize Your Work Schedule
In my work with businesspeople, I’ve found that the best place to begin to establish balance is to rework their daily schedule. Usually, an examination of the daily agenda reveals inefficiencies that can be eliminated and, in doing so, reduce the time and energy needed at work.
First, write out your daily schedule and the amount of time that you devote to each responsibility. It’s been my experience that, though there will always be some changes on a day-to-day basis, a basic and predictable schedule is common.
Next, establish your work priorities: what do you absolutely need to do, what is less important, and what can be delegated. You will likely find that you are spending time on tasks that aren’t essential or timely.
Then, rewrite your daily schedule to take into account these newly identified priorities. When you allow your daily calendar to be driven by your priorities, not vice versa, you will likely be more effective, less stressed, and have more time on your hands.
Be Efficient
When I work with, for example, a management team, the first thing I look for is how efficient they are in accomplishing their tasks. I have found four simple strategies can increase efficiency dramatically.
First, be disciplined. The danger of meetings, telephone calls, and emails is that, if you aren’t disciplined, they can get off-topic and waste time. In your daily schedule, determine how much time to devote to these communications and stay on task and on time.
Second, be focused. When you’re working on a project be totally present. Don’t be distracted by activities earlier in the day or what might happen later in the day. The more you can focus on the task at hand, the better job you will do and the sooner you’ll get it done.
Third, be productive. As I described in my previous newsletter on multitasking, when you try to do many tasks at once, they all suffer. And if you think you’re such a great multitasker, forget about it! Research has shown that, one, people who think they are great multitaskers are actually rather bad at multitasking and, two, multitaskers are neither productive nor efficient. Pick a task, set everything else aside, get the job done, then move on to the next task.
Fourth, control your technology. Most businesspeople believe that technology, such as computers, mobile phones, and email, has made them more productive and efficient. To the contrary, in many cases, technology acts as a distraction that interferes with your doing your job well. Research has also demonstrated that technology has added to the work/life imbalance of businesspeople.
Separate Your Work and Your Life
Part of the problem with technology is that you can now easily take your work home with you. You can do work and be reached away from the office by computer, mobile phone, and email. But by melding your work and life, you throw your work and life even more out of balance.
As much as you can, leave your work at work. If you have to bring work home, don’t’ do work when you should be doing life. Set aside time at home when you aren’t with your spouse or children and get the work done. A big no-no in work/life balance is taking a business call or responding to email when you are, for example, at the park with your children or at dinner with friends.
Be in the moment away from work. Remind yourself that, when you’re doing warm fuzzies, you can’t enjoy them fully if you’re not fully ‘there.’ When you’re experiencing life, allow yourself to be totally immersed in it, which means not allowing work to intrude (unless there’s a crisis that requires your immediate attention).
Finally, have technology discipline. Few people are so important that they need to be in constant contact with the office 24/7. Allow yourself to turn off your smartphone when you’re home or leave it at home when you’re out doing life.
Be Realistic
When it comes to work/life balance, don’t strive for perfection. The reality is that imbalance happens; it’s the nature of work and life. When you are forced to experience imbalance at any given point in time, don’t beat yourself up about it. Your goal isn’t to be in balance all of the time. Your goals should be to be balanced most of the time and, when life become imbalanced, seek out brief periods of balance in the imbalance to keep you from tipping over completely.
Keys to Balance
I want to conclude with three things that I have personally found to be essential for establishing an over-all state of work/life balance.
First, get enough sleep. We are complex beings and sleep is indispensible to our physical and psychological well-being. Balance without adequate sleep is simply impossible.
Second, a day off is a day off. Except when absolutely necessary, shut and lock the door on your office (literally and metaphorically speaking) on your days off. Devote them entirely to warm fuzzies or important non-work responsibilities. Real days off rejuvenate, recenter, and recharge you, so that when you return to work, you’re again ready to roll.
Third, take a vacation. The key to your over-all physical and psychological health, in other words, your work/life balance, is to allow yourself extended periods of time in which you leave work behind and immerse yourself thoroughly in life. Vacations enable you to make deposits to your “psychic savings account” that you can draw on when your work/life balance once again gets out of kilter.
