Time Management Self Improvement

I can’t help feeling that using the phrase ‘work/life balance‘ reinforces the problem it seeks to address. To describe a need to balance work and life implies that work is not part of ‘life’. If that’s the case then approx 50% of the average persons hours on earth are devoted to non-life - surely that’s dead.

People are not asking ‘how can I balance two opposing areas of existence?’, but ‘how can I live a holistic life; where all aspects of life co-exist and compliment each other and do not oppose each other?’ Balancing things puts them in opposing positions - we reinforce a problem as oppose to deal with it. We need integration not balance.

If you are living a non-integrated life then perhaps you need to make some major changes. Some escape home by going to work and others escape work by going home. Some people feel like two different people. The person at work is not the person at home. If that’s the case, both your team and family are missing out. For some this is so extreme they keep the two parties at arms length. They feel that if the two meet there will be some kind of implosion of realities and life will end. Actually - it’s at that point that life begins.

I believe it is my reasonability as a leader and employer to care for my team. Yes, we have goals, vision, dreams and commitments - but they are meaningless if we destroy lives, demoralize people and deny children their parents input.

Leaders lead people not projects. If we do not care for our people they will not stay around.

Southwest Airlines (the most successful airline in the world!) has some ways they help people live integrated lives. How do they do this? Their office corridors are lined with photos of team members’ families, wedding photos - they even have an area devoted to pets. Their people don’t leave. They are committed to the business because the business is committed to them

I suggest that we need to focus on integrating all aspects of life and not attempt to balance them out. People will happily work overtime to meet a deadline when they know there is a commitment to them as a person coming back.

Steve Holloway is the founding leader of a registered charity with a team of 40+. He is also a professional speaker & author - for more information see Generous Leadership

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Having a work life balance is your best bet to ensure happiness at work and at home.

Certainly, there is plenty of research that suggest that companies expect more work from fewer employees especially after the large layoffs and downsizings that have occurred over the past few years in many companies and industries.

You’ve probably heard the old adage that money can’t buy happiness but not having money certainly doesn’t buy happiness either. Your job obviously provides you with income but no job is worth throwing away your personal life for.

At the end of the day, if your job requires you to work long hours and/or weekends that disrupt your personal life, you might either need to figure out how to get the proper work life balance or decide if this is the right job for you.

Here are some suggestions to help you get the proper work life balance:

1. Improve your time management.

Do you waste time at work that could otherwise be spent on productive tasks? If you spend 20 minutes per day in the smoking area, 20 minutes talking sports with colleagues and 20 minutes making personal phone calls, there is 1 hour you have wasted. Don’t procrastinate. Look for ways to improve your time management and organizational skills.

2. Ensure you are doing everything you can to remedy the situation yourself.

Do you take work home with you even though you don’t need to? Is everything at work a crisis to you? If your manager seems to be less stressed about work than you are, then something is wrong. We sometimes have a tendency to make mountains out of molehills and make things bigger than they actually are. Not everything is a crisis and not everything needs to be treated as being critically important. Learn how to distinguish between tasks that need to be done now and things that just need to be done at some point and don’t require you to drop everything else.

3. Speak with your manager regarding your situation and possible remedies.

A good manager will understand the need for a work life balance and will help you achieve it. Is there the option for you to work from home one or more days per week? Do you require an additional staff member to help you with your workload? Could some of the work you are doing be done by other staff members? Write down options that you and your boss can consider and discuss them together to figure out how to move forward.

4. Change jobs.

Some companies work their employees harder than others, that’s a reality. Before looking for a new job, ensure you have done everything you can to achieve a work life balance and that your inability to achieve it is not your fault. It would be a disaster to switch jobs and then find out you face the same (or a bigger) problem with a new employer.

5. Change careers.

Certainly this is drastic but some careers/industries are known to demand more from employees than others. In some cases even if you have done everything you can to achieve a work life balance, your career might simply prevent if from happening. I know some people who have changed careers and taken less money and responsibilities but are happier for it. Your priorities might determine whether or not this is as option.

The balance between work and life can be a tenuous one but your long-term happiness and health depends on it. No job is worth ignoring your personal life for.

Before achieving a work life balance, you need to take stock of your life and see what you can do to make things better.

Look for ways to improve your time management and organizational skills and don’t procrastinate.

Don’t make things more difficult than they need to be.

Carl Mueller is an Internet entrepreneur and professional recruiter who wants to help you find your dream career.

Visit Carl’s website to separate yourself from other job searchers: http://www.find-your-dream-career.com

Sign up for The Effective Career Planner, Carl’s free 5-day course: http://www.find-your-dream-career.com/effective-career-planner.html

Ezine editors/Webmasters: Please feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your website. Please don’t change any of the content and please ensure that you include the above bio that shows my website URL. If you would like me to address any specific career topics in future articles, please let me know.

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Work life balance is the new Holy Grail; that search for nirvana; the need to find peace and contentment, the desire to achieve that fine sense of equilibrium that we can be happy with.

For some people that means not working at all but, for many it means being happy with the amount of hours they spend at and think about work and are equally happy about their none working hours; whether that be time spent with family and friends or time spent participating in sports, music or other hobbies or indeed just relaxing doing nothing in particular except just being!

However, the achievement of this perfect balance seems to escape so many people and I believe that’s because the important things and I mean the truly important things, get overtaken by the urgent stuff! Of course important to you may be different than important to me, but I bet neither of us would wish the sum total of our lives to be an accumulation of the achievement of stuff, trivia and emails!

So many people say that vacation time is important yet they rarely take a vacation; so many people say their health and “keeping fit” is really important to them yet they rarely do any exercise and eat on the run most of the time; so many people say its really important to plan their time effectively yet they fire fight from day to day.

So what can you do to get one step closer to your particular version of a good work life balance?

Put simply - decide what’s important in your life. Once you have really thought about that, the rest is easy.

If you say spending at least 2 hours a day with your family is really important to you then make it so. If you say making time each day to speak with each of your team members for 15 minutes is important then make it so. Other things may crop up that may seem important but most of the time the urgency of them is either determined by someone else or only appears more important because it is happening at that moment in time.

It is up to you to make a conscious choice about the importance or not of everything that shows up in your life be it at work or in your personal or social life.

Do you really want to get to the final years of your life, look back and say well I least I got all my emails done!

“Make decisions from the heart and use your head to make it work out.” Sir Girad

©2005 Beverley Hamilton

Beverley Hamilton works with independent business consultants to help them grow a profitable consultancy and still have time for their life.
You can get my Free Ecourse Discover the 5 Most Common Incorrect Assumptions Independent Business Consultants Make and a complimentary subscription to Quickstart, the newsletter specifically for consultants. Go to One Step Further for more instantly accessible resources. Your future Your choice

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