Balance And Sustainability: The Dynamic Duo Of Time Management

I think we are all looking for a happy balance in life

. A balance between our business or job lives and all of the rest; lets call it our personal lives. How we manage our time, Time Management, is where we will find the tools, systems and methods to help make this separation happen for us. This is a two-part process; we want to find the happy medium between what is basically work and fun, and then when we think we have the right mixture, we need to see if we can make it happen over the long haul.

Finding the Balance

I have found that I have personally had a hard time with the separation between work and fun because I work from home. My office is in the basement and I work almost exclusively on the computer, a bad combination. Work is close, and never far away. I have a habit of just going downstairs for a moment, and end up staying for hours. With operating from home, I find myself never really have a full day off which makes the workweek seem never ending.

I find that I cheat; I set out an Agenda that has time off set aside, but when I do extra work, I do not record it in my Day Planner. I pretend that because I do not write it down, it never happened. Talk about denial! This is one of the advantages of working with a good Time Management System; you develop a workable plan, then you work that plan, pay attention to it because that is the reason you spent the time there in the first place.

One of the principles of getting and having a good healthy balance between work and pleasure is this, by the time you are feeling over worked and stressed out; you have already missed the boat for this go around. The time to take some time off and give yourself a breather is when you are still feeling fresh. It sounds strange but it's true. I am working this year, on the premise that I want to give myself some set time off, before I am ready to just collapse and fall over, which my pattern in the past.

Only you can set the parameters that will best work for you. Adopting proper Time Management habits will help you set out the boundaries, set out the days and times when you work, and the times that are set where you basically unwind and kick back. We all need rest and relaxation, the key that we are looking for is how much to set aside for work and how much to set aside for all of the rest. My final advice on this side of the conversation is this: to get the most out of life, you must set an appropriate amount of time aside for non work/job related activities, and this is a must.

Is It Sustainable?

I call this the dynamic duo of Time Management; the other partner is the sustainability part. We have to work on seeing what works best for us, how much work/job time can we spend and then add in as much time as we think we can afford and need for fun, and then see if it works for us. Once we have found what works for us, a balance, then we have to see if we can make a life of it, see if we can sustain the lifestyle we have created, over a long period of time.

We have a tight rope act to perform, juggling two opposites, work and pleasure. When we think we have a fit between the two, we then hold our breath and see if it's feasible over the long haul. As you barrel your way through your present daily routine, start to look at what you are doing, and ask yourself these two questions, "do I want to be doing what I am doing now in 5 years?" And the second question, "will I be able to be doing what I am doing now in 5 years?" Tough questions. Have a great day.

Copyright (c) 2010 Bryan Beckstead

by: Bryan Beckstead

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