Hello world! yes it’s been a long long while since I last posted a thought, but after a year of getting on with life and getting bogged down in day to day stuff that takes you away from your passions I felt a pull to confident changes so here I am.
I’ve decided that I want to share my thoughts again and just let people know about the things I discover and make smile.
Be right back……:)
The frustrations of life often come about because we lack information or sufficient control over how we choose to use our time. In order to make adjustments to the way we use your valuable minutes its important to really know how we are choosing to use them now. Here’s a technique to start straight away which may give you some surprising information about your life.
1 Start a 7 day life log
This might seem like a big job but you need to keep it simple, a list and maybe a couple of words for each activity. This will paint a good picture of how you are using your minutes and highlight areas where you could save time by combining activities and also illustrate just how balanced your days are between the stuff you ought to do and the stuff you want to do. Just like a food diary, if you can see it all laid before you then you can start to see opportunities for more fun activities, improving the way you complete tasks and the things that waste your time. Achieving balance is all about putting everything on the scales and adjusting as you go.
2 Use three highlighter pens on your log to identify:
You need to be totally ruthless with this exercise, remember the aim is to get to know your life so that you can gain some control over your minutes.
3 Seek and change
List the time wasters you highlighted and pick one off the list to replace with a fun activity or a necessary one such as doing the shopping earlier in the week to allow more time for something else after. If you feel able maybe do this with up to three time wasters. It’s a gradual process and you can reduce channel surfing by half if that feels more manageable.
You can also list the necessary and fun things and identify where you can improve how you carry out a task to save time or increase the amount of time you spend on something you enjoy.
The key to this exercise is to feel completely familiar and present with how you spend your life rather than blindly frittering away your minutes and feeling more frustrated or stressed.
Good luck and do Let me know how you get on.
The term work life balance conjures an image of our lives split into 2 parts where work is an unwelcome intruder. Not so long ago it was a term we might have had to explain but now it is almost part of the package on offer when you go for a new job. The term is an accurate one but the common perception maybe needs to change to allow a little more harmony.
The pace and commitments of modern living have pitched our income stream against the things that we deem really important such as family, interests and friends. In generations past where work was normally nearer to home and within the community in which you lived, there would be a natural link between your lives and where you made your money. Now of course, commuting is the name of the game and we are increasingly spending more time getting to far flung meetings and conferences than we do at the event itself!
Expectations of our bosses, colleagues friends and neighbours means that we have to keep chasing the next opportunity to increase our income to appear ‘successful’ and of course to service that creeping debt we always thought would be paid off in a few months. So the choices we are making are often driven by the gain to progress and keep up rather than by what might fit in with who we are, what we enjoy doing and the sort of people we like to be around.
Of course it is not practical to change what we do and throw in that boring stressful job, of course we have bills to pay and a life to maintain, but isn’t it possible to make some changes to move towards welcoming work into your life and achieving a better balance?
It is possible to make small changes in how we do things to start to make work feel a part of your life rather than something that needs to be balanced with it. For example, working from home one day every couple of weeks may not seem significant but perhaps you could go the gym or pick up the kids with the hours you save travelling on that day.
It is not always possible in many jobs to work from home, and in situations such as retail or call centres it maybe a case of exploring ways to work flexible hours or you may be able to find more creative work patterns where business needs allow.
Feeling like work and life are working together reduces the feelings of tension and guilt and allows us to be more present and happy in both. Small changes to the way we commute, the patterns we work and over time aligning what we do with what we are passionate about can slowly create the sense of balance that we are encouraged to find.
We are living in an age of noise and movement. Shops open 24/7, television offers choice beyond what we dreamed even 20 years ago, information is coming at us from every source, our rooms are filled with wireless signals that allow us to access the Internet form anywhere and we use technology so that we can work from home and yet never be away from work.
Every Modern City?
This is of course progress, it is convenient and when we can afford it we all try and benefit from it. The credit crunch is taking a grip and the need to work and keep up with the demands of our kids, the expectations of society and our personal frustrations at never escaping the rat race lead us further into a rat race of debt and hollow ambition. Here’s a link to an article by Laurael Ives in The TImes which offers some interesting tips on coping with and countering busy city life http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article4587980.ece.
It is naive to think of being able to escape all this and in most cases most people wouldn’t want to be without it completely, but there is a need for balance a point where we take what we need from life and then enjoy being in control of our choices. Sometimes it’s just what we need to take a walk somewhere quieter and simpler….
A time to relax
Another aim of this blog is to highlight ways to make life a little more quiet, to turn down the volume so you can still enjoy the sounds but you can also hear yourself think. In making things a bit simpler, you get to spot the pieces of life that are quietly waiting to make you smile.
