Balancing Work Life Balance

    Work-Life Balance has been an interest of mine for quite a while now. I have worked in various environments where the emphasis on work-life balance was different. Work life balance is not a concrete concept, it is mainly subjective. It comes to the individual who has to answer the question if their life is balanced correctly. With so many things changing and priorities shifting from day to day and throughout the day, there is no real such thing as work-life balance You will find yourself in a constant balancing act and never actually achieve it, and get stressed out trying to do so! While I do not believe there is a work-life balance solution that works for every person, I do believe there are at least some standards that can apply to everyone. This post will be a little different. I will compose two lists, one that describes first the ways work life balance can be applied to everyone, and then second the variable aspect that varies from person to person.

Work Life Balance for everyone

1. You can’t constantly work and expect to have success forever

2. You can’t not work at all and expect to be able to get by without working at all

3. The ratio between work and life will change constantly - can be 50/50 at some times, but there will be times to focus more on work (busy season at work, starting a new business, launching a new product/service, etc.) and other times to focus more on life (like vacation, family events, weekends, etc.)

4. It is always important to have priorities for each day

Examples of Variables for Work Life Balance

1. People have different ideas of how much they want to work. For some, work life balance is a 40 hour work-week, others it may be just working part time, while others may consider 60+ hours per week as balanced. This can also change from time to time.

2. Not only the quantity of time, but also what you are doing. If you are doing something you find fulfilling, a higher quantity of that activity will be possible and you still feel balanced. You may feel overwhelmed because you are in the wrong place, with the wrong people, and/or doing the wrong thing. 

3. Sometimes you have to temporarily adjust your concept of work life balance due to demands of a job or a personal life situation.

4. It is possible for some people to pretty much completely ignore the concept of work-life balance completely and be content. If you are one of those people and you read this far, I thank you for at least giving it some consideration.

Work life balance is not an excuse to slack off or appear weak. It is an active choice you have to make to set up a boundary that you don’t work so much that you lack end up lacking fulfillment and burning out. There is a balance to work life balance. You have to find the balance that works best for you. If you are in a situation where someone is dictating your work life balance that make you uncomfortable, then the best you can do is do something about it.

When Your Time Management Strategy Does Not Work

    Have you ever tried something over and over again and repeatedly failed at it? There are times that I have done that with productivity and only to realize that it doesn’t work over and over again. There is a saying for something like this that I coined when I was child when I really loved balloons “trying to blow up a popped ballon.” Have you ever tried and to blow up a popped ballon and did it successfully? It is something that is a lost cause and is not worth pursuing. While no one can actually blow up a popped balloon, time management and productivity is not always as cut and dry. What works for you may not work for someone else. The very first step to knowing this is to first realize what works for you and what doesn’t. Then embrace who you are and focus on the strategies that yield the highest returns. Here are a few things you can do when you find realize something isn’t working.

1. Make sure it is not working. Give what you are doing enough time to be sure that it is not working. Don’t give up too quickly on any strategy just because of a few bumps on the road. For example, if batching your activities do not work, it may just because you haven’t mastered it yet or found an effective way to implement it yet.
2. Find out the reasons why it is not working. Once you are able to confirm that a strategy doesn’t work for you, the next point in the process is to determine the reasons why. When you do find the reasons why it doesn’t work, this can help you determine what other strategies may or may not work as well. If a detailed schedule does not work well for you, it is also possible that a detailed to do list isn’t that helpful either. It may just overwhelm you and seem excessive.
3. Don’t give up. Just because some strategies don’t work doesn’t mean others won’t as well. It may be easy to lump everything productivity and time management together. Just like health and fitness, some people don’t even bother exercising because they have a hard time eating healthy. Some is better than none. We can always make progress little by little.
4. Focus on what you do well. Focusing on your strengths and what strategies work best for you is an excellent path to take. If you do that, this will keep you energized and satisfied the most, so even doing what you don’t like and are not as good at is more tolerable. I can speak from personal experience when I say doing something that you don’t like and are not good at can negatively effect every aspect of your life. If making a time budget throws you off and totally ruins time management for you, then don’t do it! Do what works for you.

As I said earlier, we are all different and do things differently and have different strengths and weaknesses. We need to do what helps us the most possible. There is no sense in a strategy that wastes your time, makes your life harder, and ultimately causes you to manage your time worse than before. Don’t try to blow up a popped ballon, if it doesn’t work and you know it doesn’t work, don’t do it.

Compounding Time

     When saving money, one incentive to encourage people to save their money is the concept of compounding interest. We can invest money and have it work for us and it will grow, the earlier we do this, the better it is. Time works the same way. Time compounding is a simple concept, in the simplest form it can explained like this: 10 minutes 6 days a week adds up to 52 hours a year. While we do not have more time now or later, and can’t “invest” it to have more time later in a literal sense. There are; however, ways to make our time work for us. We can invest in activities that will create more time later. Below are ways understanding compounding time can be helpful.

1. Finish books. We can open a huge book of over 1,000 pages and never even bother to start. However, when compartmailzed in smaller portions, it is much easier to accomplish. This also works for writing a book. I used this technique for reviewing my journals.
2. Any fitness goal. Trying to lose weight? Gain weight? Run a certain time? Bench a certain amount? All of these things take little by little and consistency. You won’t achieve any of these by doing them 20 hours straight.
3. Learning a skill or concept. I have heard that it takes 10,000 hours to get really good at something. While this may be true to an extent, I am sure this varies a lot based on the skill and the person. It may take shorter or longer. What is always consistent is that the skill won’t happen overnight.
4. Big projects. The concept of project management comes into play with this. It is all about planning out smaller tasks in achievable amounts of time so that something great is accomplished. This adds an additional aspect of having multiple team members as well, which in a way is a way to increase the amount of hours you have to accomplish something (this is the case if you are the owner)

As they said, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your book, your muscles, your business or job, or anything else. It is also important to not get discouraged when small steps seem too small. Remember all of these little things do add up.

The Benefits of Batching

A very effective productivity strategy that I believe in is batching. One way to effectively execute this strategy is to include all tasks of one type at one time. This is best accomplished by making categories and assigning items to these categories. An example can be home, work, reading, finances, etc. I have several different categories in my task manager of which I use for this purpose. I also have tasks scheduled at appropriate times in a way that has me able to focus on that type of thing. Examples of this are combing trips, doing several household chores at once, doing whatever reading you want to do all at the same time, etc. Here are just a few benefits of batching.

1. More efficient and get more done. This saves time from having to shift focus all over the place. For example, when focusing on finances, schedule a time once or twice a month to pay bills, reconcile balances, transfer to savings, etc. Do all of that at once rather than all over the place and this will save you time.

2. Better Focus. As I stated in point #1, it does improve focus on the task at hand. It also improves your focus overall and keeps you more focused even when not completing any tasks because you develop a habit of being more focused.

3. Less Agitation. It is easy to get frazzled and annoyed when your focus is all over the place and you go from one to the task to another without any plan or strategy. You will be calmer if you are able to focus and batch your tasks.

4. You can develop a steady routine. It is easier to develop a routine and schedule when like tasks are batched together.

5. Better chances of following your schedule and routine. Developing a good schedule is one thing, following it is another. If you desire to follow a schedule and stay on track, batching works better.

    Batching your tasks is a great method to organize and make your routine efficient. I do this as much as possible as it helps me get more done. In a world, we are always pressing to get more done, techniques like batching are great.

How to Recover from Being Behind on your To Do List

    We all get behind on schedule and off track at times. To be completely honest, I am quite far behind on my to do list. In fact, 25% of my total tasks over overdue! This happens when you get extremely busy, tired, sick, or some combination thereof. The most I have been behind in recent days was when I was sick back in March. Now again, I have fallen behind but just by being busy with a lot of things at the same time that are not in my normal routine. We all find situations where we are behind our schedules, to do lists, and are off track for one reason another. Here are a few ways you can recover and get your to do list back to current.

1. Take care of the easier tasks first. Do several quick and easy tasks first to build a momentum. Depending on how detailed your to do list, you may have tasks that can be done in a minute or less on them. If tasks that short do make it on your list, do those first. Although, they may not be urgent, getting them done can help you feel more productive and then help you the bigger projects of the day. Also, having it off of your mind should be a help in general. 

2. Narrow your tasks down. If the to do list for the day is over 100 items or some other amount that you know is unsustainable, then it is time to pick out the most important tasks of the day. It is important that we set priorities for the day and do what we are supposed to be doing and only focus on them. Seeing too many tasks at once will make you unproductive and paralyze you from getting anything done

3. Reorder the priorities for the day. When we have too many tasks and we do have them narrowed down, it is beneficial to reevaluate the priorities for the day. Although all lives are different, priorities can change day to day in practically every field and at home as well. 

4. Focus. It is always important to focus, but even more so if you are behind. You need to least set aside some good uninterrupted time to get a good chunk of what you need to get done completed. If that is not possible, do the best that you can. We can’t control all circumstances, but can still keep a productive mindset and can get ahead again when we put our mind to it. 

5. Don’t wear yourself out. When you are behind schedule, don’t wear yourself out trying to get ahead. Don’t stay up too late or compromise sleep just to get ahead. This won’t often work and you will be more tired and less productive the next day only to fall more behind or break even at best. This creates a vicious cycle of fatigue and being overwhelmed, which only leads to being less productive.

While it can be very overwhelming to see a to do list with a lot of items that are not complete, the best way to go about it is one step at a time. Remembering what is most important to do at the moment will go a long way. In the fast paced lives we are living now, slow and steady doesn’t always do the trick. However, consistent and steady is a much more effective mindset to have in order to get back on and stay on track.

Spring Cleaning for your Schedule

    I think this is going to be the last post for my series regarding spring cleaning. This time I will discuss spring cleaning of our schedules. There are many ways we can review our schedules to do some spring cleaning. The best method to do this is to start with the biggest items in our schedule. For many of us, work is the biggest item in our schedules and take the most of our time. That is one we most likely won’t be able to do much about. If you are in a position to take a job that requires less time or retire, then this may be a viable option. For the rest of us, we will look for the next biggest items to cut and go from there. If we are tracking our time closely, we can get a very clear picture. However, if you are not and just have a more general picture of your schedule, it should still be easy to tell what requires the most time. Even activities that appear we can’t do anything about, it is still worth a shot to review them. This should be done every so often, so spring time is a perfect time to visit this, especially after cleaning your physical space, your digital space, and your mind. Here are a few ideas of how we can free up space in our calendar.

1. Focus on what is most frequent. Instead of going from biggest to smallest, focus on what we do the most. Very often too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing. Also, too much of anything is a good thing. Unless your life is perfectly balanced, there is very likely to be some areas that are in excess and needs to be trimmed.
2. Focus on what is either absent or is too little. On the other end of the spectrum, there is something that we want or need to do. But we are not doing it. This could be like going to the gym, reading, reflecting, learning, etc. We all have something we should be doing more. This is what we are freeing up time from the excess to do.
3. Rate activities by importance. Make a list of categories and sort by importance. Then go through each category and analyze if sufficient time is being given to each of them. This can be very helpful and provides a good balance between both the first and second points. I would recommend this one the most for an ongoing basis.

  It is very helpful to keep your scheudle free of clutter. A cluttered schedule will stress you out and keep you off track. A cluttered schedule will cause you to miss apointments and deadlines just like you would lose something in a messy room or forget something in a cluttered mind. Let us now focus on keeping our schedule clutter free as this will make us much more productive.

Spring Cleaning for Your Mind

We all have many thoughts, some of us have too many thoughts and are unable to get our minds to stop. This could be to the extent where we have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. We all have occasional incidents that keep us awake when we shouldn’t be, but if this is a chronic issue, you may want to do some spring cleaning for your mind. Just like cleaning a house or your computer, it is beneficial to explore the possibility of clearing out your mind. There are tons of things we think about and don’t need to be thinking about at the moment. This can cause us to be distracted even when there are no external causes for us to do so. There are ways we can help this.

1. Focus on what you are doing at the moment. It is very beneficial to focus on one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth as I discussed in a previous post. By allowing your mind to be as uncluttered as possible, this will allow for maximized productivity.
2. Follow projects and tasks through completely as much as possible. While this will not work for big projects as a whole, it is possible to break bigger projects into smaller tasks. That way, you can be focusing on just one task at a time rather than worrying the entire project at the same time and getting overwhelmed.
3. Do not worry about the past. We often think about the past and focus too much on things that happened and that we cannot change. Since we are unable to change the past, thinking about it and regretting it won’t do any good. I am not saying don’t think about the past at all, as there are all kinds of lesions that we can learn and it is very valuable to learn from our mistakes and remember what went well.
4. Do not worry about the future. Just like the past, worrying about the future won’t solve anything, but just distracting you. Worrying about a due date for a big project, a final exam, a meeting, or anything will not help it come quicker or make it easier when it does come. Worrying will just waste your time. I am definitely not saying we shouldn’t plan or consider all kinds of possibilities. I am just recommending that we don’t worry so much that we get paralyzed and are not productive.
5. Journal Thoughts and Ideas. If we are in a situation where there is a lot on our mind and it is causing distraction, it is a good idea to provide an outlet to get those thoughts out. One way to do this is to journal these thoughts. This can be done on paper or electronically, whichever works best.

Cleaning out our minds is something we should do regularly just like our physical space and our digital space as well. We do not need to only do this during the spring time, but since we are in the mood of spring cleaning, now is a great time. Clearing out and being organized in our mind is very beneficial.

It's Time for Digital Spring Cleaning!

    Last week I discussed the joys of spring cleaning! Getting your physical space cleaned and organized will make a huge difference on your mindset and productivity. This improves your ability to focus immensely. Not having so much stuff around to get in your way or distract or you is a huge help. This is not only true for your desk, room, car, house, etc. This also applies to your computer, tablet, phone, and anything else you may use. Whether you use hard disk storage or cloud storage, or both, we quickly realize that there is a lot of opportunity for clutter when it comes to our digital world. I have a few old devices I do consider physical clutter at this time because they run slow and are not as useful and have a lot of random files and apps that I don’t need or use anymore. With the old devices that I plan to sell or dispose of I am not really concerned. However, for the rest of my digital world, I do plan to get this a lot more organized. However, with many devices and many files, apps, photos, music, videos, etc. it can be just like cleaning out a house. It can be overwhelming so that you don’t know where to begin. If you are wondering that, here are a few ways you can get digitally cluttered and the solution.

1. Too many tabs in the web browser. We are all there at some time or another. I’ve had so many tabs open at times that I can barely see the icon, let alone any of the words. This kind of clutter is fortunately quite easy to fix because it’s a matter of closing tabs. If you really want to remember the webpage that is open on that tab you can bookmark it. 
2. Files all over the place. If your files look like a messy table or desktop, then it is time to reevaluate the organizational system. I have seen computers with over 50 different things on the desktop alone. That is totally fine if you know where everything is and when you need it, but much more often than not that is a sign of clutter and disorganization. It is like looking at a table with papers all over the place in no particular order. The best remedy to this is similar to clearing files off of a desk. The first step is to come up with a system such as what folders you will need to get organized and how you want to do it. Make sure you come up with a good system first, it will help you in the future.
3. There is no consistency between devices. Are you storing files on a computer’s hard drive, and then not be able to access them anywhere else? Cloud storage can really help with something like this. There are also many apps that work well on multiple devices and can be used to get you much more organized. Depending on your needs and your files, the best solution and system will vary from person to person. Since I have several devices, this is more important for me than someone who maybe just has a computer and a phone.
4. There are too many apps. I admit to having to many apps. There are plenty that I stopped using, or never really used to begin with. My phones are much better because I get a new one more often than other devices. I have apps that I have had since my first iPod Touch for iOS and from my first smart phone (but thankfully those are just on the Google account and not on the phone). I haven’t taken this advice yet, but I think it may be time to clear out some of those apps.

These seem to be the main culprits I have come across. Since I spend a lot of time on electronic devices, it is just about as important for me to be organized and clutter free as I would be with a physical space. If there are any other ideas you have for digital clutter, please let me know by leaving a comment.

The Benefits of Cleaning for your Productivity

Spring is in the air! Whether or not it feels like it where we you are, many of us may be thinking about spring cleaning. There is something about flowers and trees blooming, weather finally getting a little warmer, the days getting longer that motivates us to do new things and get things cleaned up. If you are not into spring cleaning, you could still be into cleaning and organizing. We do not need to wait until the spring or any other special occasion to get things cleaned and organized. I have recently been cleaning up in various areas both in terms of physically cleaning and organizing. There are several benefits to cleaning and organizing when it comes to productivity. Just to name a few below

1. Being organized saves time. When you know where everything is, it saves you time from looking for whatever you need. It is much easier to find what you need, especially in a time crunch that way. Not to mention that you don’t only save the time you would spend looking for something, but also the time you would have lost due to distraction
2. Being organized saves plenty of aggaravation. I have been there way too many times looking for things, my patience gets very short with something like that and I have a lot of motivation to set up as many systems to have in place so I know where everything is and also have as little clutter as possible.
3. Being organized gives you a productive mindset. When the space you are working and living in is physically clean and organized. Without the mess and clutter physically there, there will also be less clutter mentally because you are not thinking about all of the clutter you see. It is an application of the old adage “out of sight, out of mind”
4. A clean space is better for your well being overall. When everything is cleaned and organized, it is better overall. It is better for your health when your space is cleaned more regularly and also better at preventing illness from spreading. If you can avoid getting sick, it is definitely better. You can read a previous blog post about how off track I got (and you can too) if you do get sick. Even if you don’t get sick, a physically clean and organized space is better for us mentally as well as our mindset.

I always enjoy cleaning and organizing. I know we all don’t always actually enjoy doing it, but we can all agree that after we are done we feel better. We are happy we are done and happy with the result. A clean room, house, workspace, car, computer, phone, etc is better. Being organized both physically and digitally will help us with our mental capability as well. Think of a computer with almost all of the hard drive filled up, it is always slower because it requires RAM to be filled up quicker to allow for storage. I plan to stay on the theme of cleaning and organizing and the benefits for a few weeks or so while we are getting into spring. Please let me know your thoughts or if you have any suggestions whatsoever for topics.

How to Take Advantage of Spurts of Productivity

     We all work a little differently and have different working styles. Some of us work better in the morning while others at night. Also, the type of work we are doing can come into play, maybe structured work is better in the morning and more creative work is better in the afternoon. Maybe we are very good at creative work but not so much at other styles. The first step of course is to determine what work we should be doing and what we are good at and then the next step is to find out when is the best time to do whatever we are doing. This is the prerequisite to maximizing our spurts of productivity

    After we have determined the what and when that works best for us the next steps is to determine when our spurts of maximum productivity are. At first, it will definitely seem to be absolutely random and can happen at any time. That may be actually case, and if that is purely the case, than the best thing to do is take advantage of when they do occur. For others of us, there is at least some rhyme or reason for a spurt of productivity. It can be as simple as when we have a morning cup of coffee or an afternoon cup of tea. Here are steps of finding and maximizing our spurts of productivity.

1. Regulate the timing of the spurts of productivity. While this may not always be possible, it is best when we can plan on times when were are the most productive so we can schedule our focused work time then, and avoid things like meetings or breaks during those times.
2. Take advantage of these times. Do as much as possible when you are the most productive. Plan on getting most of the work done. The 80/20 rule (the Pareto Principle) can also apply here, 80% of our productivity happens in 20% of our time.
3. Limit Distractions. Your sweet spot of productivity is not the time for team members, co-workers, bosses, even clients to bother you and interrupt you. Do your best to communicate with everyone that this is your focused time to get the most done you can and realiy need to focus. Even if you just blocking out two hours like 10 AM-12 PM each weekday.
4. Don’t get too rigid and inflexible. Say you do pick 10 AM-12 PM every weekday now, 5 years from now that may be very different. We all change, our lives change, our work changes, and everything around for us change. Do not expect your most productive time of the day to stay the same forever, although it may stay the same or very similar also. If it doesn’t need any adjustments, don’t arbitrarily change it.
5. Build Momentum. The more consistency there is, there is more momentum. You want momentum to build and systems to be in place. A good momentum will save you time and energy from having to think about what you are going to be doing if you already are

There are many other ways of working styles that I will likely get more into in future posts. Please let me know your thoughts on what your working style is and also how you work with spurts of productivity, if you have them. Personally, I know I do, and they are not always all that consistent. I am working on that because that will make it easier for me to get more done. I find myself having random spurts, sometimes late morning, other times late afternoon, sometimes even late in the evening. Take advantage of productivity spurts when you have them.