3 steps to improving your life balance

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:

• Necessary tasks – such as work, paying bills and caring responsibilities.

• Time wasters – such as looking at junk emails throughout the day and channel surfing when not actually watching a programme of interest, there are lots more you can think of!

• Fun things – reading, catching up with friends, time with the kids

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.

Work life balance could just be a life in balance

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.

5 ways to beat the Sunday night blues

It’s so familiar; the weekend starts with a feeling of relief and optimism and continues into Saturday night.  Sunday morning starts in a peaceful haze, we go get a paper have a lazy breakfast then…. There is a faint feeling of discomfort in the pit of our stomach.  Yes the weekend is nearly over; it’s Sunday and tomorrow is hell-day!

This can cause huge anxiety and millions around the world experience this every week of their lives. It’s a cycle that leaves many feeling hopeless, worried, frightened and depressed. The power that this fear causes takes away from any positive benefits gained in the previous two days of the weekend and essentially leaves us feeling far from refreshed on Monday.

So how can we change this feeling? Here are five suggestions:
1. Monday will arrive
The first thing is to realise that failing something disastrous happening, Monday will arrive, get used to it, every Sunday you feel crap yet it always leads to Monday and on it goes. So accept the thing we cannot change and understand the thoughts you are thinking.  For example, be specific, what is it that is causing worry about Monday, commuting? Your boss?  workmates? workload?  Your lack of experience?  The way to make Sunday night feel better  is to think differently about Monday. The problem won’t just disappear but you will feel more in control if you control what you do and how you think.
If you know why you are not feeling good about something you have a better chance of dealing with it.  So if it’s the workload you have left behind, one way to approach the situation is to accept that the work is there and that you will have to go in to face it whether you worry or not.  The next thing is to plan how you will reduce the load, it’s not helpful to think of how to eliminate it as this may just seem too much to handle.  A small achievable plan of how to reduce the load in small chunks  might include speaking with a contact or workmate for more information or guidance,  making a phone call to move something on or asking your boss for some training or support. These maybe enough to change the way you think about the task at hand.
2. Don’t waste your minutes
Your weekend is important because it’s time you have to yourself so use all of it for yourself. Rest, watch T.V. go for walks, read the paper, meet friends whatever it is that is part of your life then you should not cut it short because of something that you would rather not be doing in the future.  Try going to the cinema on a Sunday afternoon and follow that up with a night at a cool restaurant, perhaps things that you would never normally do on a Sunday.  So instead of switching off at 6pm, use your time well and you can still be in bed by a sensible time to start the week in good form instead of in a state of dread.  Change your behaviour by doing something different and watch your mood change. Keeping busy with things that stop you from worrying about the next day will give you a sense that you have more control over your life. Your minutes are valuable so use them to have some fun and do something for yourself.
3. Get straight to it
Try avoiding  a slow start to the week, instead try get some energy moving and go in quickly and with purpose. Grab a coffee and start work by jotting a list of a few items you have to do in the first two hours. Keep it realistic and fairly low stress and then just go. It’s still possible to do this and yet converse with workmates about the great film you went to watch last night.  Change your approach and your mood will shift, you will feel a little more in control.
4. Plan a mid-week weekend
Monday comes and all we can live for is Friday night. Hard as it might sound, why not plan a mini weekend into your week.  Wednesday night for example might be the time you go for dinner with friends, or take the kids out bowling. You may make it your theatre night or take up a class to inspire you to change your lifestyle. The point is not to think too hard about it but to decide  that Wednesday nights  are going to be about more than continuing to tick off your minutes towards the next weekend. You will have something nice to look forward to, and the week will feel less like your boss owns it.
5. Review the week and plan ahead
Friday afternoons should have something like a 10 minute slot where you can have a quick look back over what went well over the week, and what presented problems. Before you leave, make a note of the biggest piece of work, or worrying task for Monday and also note a couple of points of how you plan solve them. You will come in to the list on Monday but will break them down into further shorter lists of tasks. How do you eat an elephant?
It’s not easy to shift the way we think but normally if we change our behaviour and just do something different we can discover something new and exciting in what we always thought was a boring or hopeless situation. Things don’t change overnight but you have the choice of whether to sit still and lament your rut or make a small change and see what else might happen.