By Don Wetmore
Time Management
Don Wetmore
Many doubt that work/life balance is attainable in today’s busy world. Yet it is attainable by rebudgeting some of our time.
To achieve work/life balance, schedule at least small amounts of time in each of your seven vital areas.
Take time for your health. There are many techniques to maintain your
personal health. Select the ones that can fit in your day. Whichever you chose, they will always have one common ingredient: taking some time.
Take the time to care for yourself. Schedule exercise and give it the same priority you would give to a business meeting or a social engagement. Plan to eat correctly and healthy.
If you don’t take time for health and fitness today, you may have to take time for sickness and illness tomorrow. It’s not a question of whether you will spend time in this area. Choose spending time to maintain your health.
Give your family the time they deserve. A funeral director friend of mine told me that he never met a widow who complained that her late husband spent too little time at work. Schedule time with your family. Bring home a surprise rose. Leave a note under someone’s pillow. Send a recent snapshot of you to a long-distance relative. Plan regular phone contact with those you don’t see often. The actions you take today will form the memories we will re-live and enjoy tomorrow.
Take control of your financial life. If you take one hour each day for independent study, in less than four years you can become an expert in the topic of your choice or develop a successful home-based business or create investment plans that will give you financial independence so that work is no longer a “have to” but a “want to.”
Maybe take some time from social media scrolling that doesn’t enhance your day all that much and redirect that time to an investment in your future.
Develop your intellectual area. If we continue to do what we do in our jobs the same way, in a few years we may become obsolete. I have worked with many “downsized” employees who lost their employment not because they weren’t working “hard enough,” but because they failed to take some of their current time to improve their skills and talents. Soon their employer did not need what they always did so well.
Enjoy a quality social life. Seek out and make friends with the people who will have positive effects in your life. Some will say that they don’t have the time for a social life. Truth is, we all do have the time. We don’t need to find the time. We need to take the time. Schedule the time.
Maximize your professional life. Don’t just do a job for a paycheck, as a way of trading your time for money. Make whatever you do personally fulfilling and satisfying, no matter where you are and what you must do. Enjoy emotional compensation in all that you do.
A successful professional told me she never held a “job,” she had always held a “position.” She understood right from the beginning of her career, when she was parking cars, then waiting on tables and beyond, that these were always opportunities to advance to the next level of her professional growth.
This doesn’t take time. It just requires a change in your perception.
Enjoy your spiritual area. This area involves not only formal religious practice, if you choose, but also our relationships with one another, our communities and our environment. It would be sad to believe we were put here only to survive and then die. What is your special role in this universe?
Don Wetmore is a certified business coach and the author of “The Productivity Handbook” and “Organizing Your Life.” Contact him at 203-394-8216 or ctsem@msn.com.