Tanya Lavoie wanted to talk about that whole work/life/social media/everything else balance issue that so many of us are dealing with these days. I wrote a post awhile back about how to juggle the personal and the professional just in the online realm, but things get a lot more complicated when you start talking about your whole life. This topic seems to be surfacing a lot these days in the online world because of the rise of Google Plus. Even before that, my friends Ian Rountree and Nic Wirtz started HardRefresh.net in response to the onslaught of Social Media fatigue.
So what can we do about this problem? Well, I can only tell you what works for me, but it seems to work pretty well. It’s two tricks. One – allot segments of time that you want to dedicate to certain tasks. Two: try to set up a schedule, which can help you figure out where to fit in those allotted segments of time.
Units of Time
To tell the truth, I got this idea from a sweet little movie called About A Boy. Hugh Grant plays a character who is blindingly rich because he lives off of the royalties from a hit Christmas single his father wrote. Now instead of having the problem of too much to do, this character has too little to do. He has no obligations whatsoever. So, in order to divide up all of that time, he views all of his activities in units of time (I think each unit is 15 minutes long). He allows 2 units, for example, for getting his hair “carefully disheveled” on a regular basis.
In my life, some tasks are already assigned to units of time. I know I have to be at work from x time to y time. I have a time when I like to eat my meals. I have a time when I like to go to bed (though I seldom make it to bed by that time). But there are lots of other things that I can assign however I want. It’s important to do this because especially in the online world, just looking at the list of stuff you have to do can be extremely discouraging and quite overwhelming. Blogging is a great example of this. You sit down and you think, “Oh man, I have to write that, and I want to write about that,” and before you know it you have to move on to something else.
To avoid that kind of scenario, and to make the most of my time, I try to set a time unit for things. For example, instead of trying to post a certain number of posts for The Blog Library every day, I do my best to do two 15-minute units of work on it (once before I go to work and once during my lunch hour). If I can’t make it past 1 15-minute chunk, then oh well. If I can do more, great, but my ultimate goal is reaching those two 15-minute windows. Fifteen minutes seems pretty reasonable, but you can also get a lot done in 15 minutes if you know that you have that amount of time available.
Making a Schedule
Now I don’t mean making a schedule like Rain Man makes in the movie…Rain Man. But every day, I try to figure out when I can fit in units of time for certain things. For example, how much time do I want to spend chatting it up on Twitter after work, and when would it make the most sense to do that? Since my work day determines so much of my schedule during the week, I work my units of time around that.
There’s another really important reason I started lightly scheduling my day though, and that is that any one segment of life can really end up eating all of your time. Many of us have a hard time turning the “work” button off. Maybe you put a lot of pressure on yourself because you feel like you aren’t spending enough time with your kids or your spouse. Maybe you feel like social media is eating your brain.
I tend to jump into things full throttle, so when I started really working in the online world, it was easy for me to spend a LOT of time on it, to the point where I didn’t prioritize things like reading or exercising or just blobbing out (which is important to do every now and then). In these busy times, it’s really important to schedule time for people and things you love. Otherwise, they can disappear in the avalanche of everything else.
How do you do the balancing act? Did this help at all? Let’s talk about it!
Image by Santiago Masquelet. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/smasquelet
Margie,
I have to say I have been so busy trying to get business given that this year has been such a terrible for business that I stopped allotting time to tasks and was just sitting down and finishing things. The problem was that yesterday I sat down to review my blog posts and I had a lot of content I did not publish on some of the blogs I write for and manage.
I was also missing out on visiting your blog and commenting like I enjoy doing because I get so much value from your posts. What a coincidence that I organized myself today and was able to make it to your blog and I find this post.
I guess we are run into these issues instead of doing the same things day by day I switch it up and sees what works best.
But maybe cutting my time units to 15 minutes will help me get a few things done and out of the way to bring my overall list down.
Well I’m glad things worked out so I could see ya here! That does seem to be how it works though. We’re sad when things are slow and crazy when things pick up, right? 🙂
I agree about using units of time. When I do this I find myself much more productive. I frequently use 15 minute block effectively. I would highly recommend some short and some longer.
Good point Jen. You need to be flexible, right? If you get too regimented then the schedule becomes your focus instead of what you need to get done. And that just isn’t any good!
Margie, I need your voice in my head daily – want to be a personal coach???? I block
time, set priorities, and somehow add more than I can “chew” – at times – thinking sure
I can do that! And, of course, it is the “me” time that gets pushed aside. I’m still working
on this balancing act – it is a work I’m progress – and getting better! Thanks for your post.
Thanks for the topic, Tanya. As you can see, this is not a problem that is unique! It’s interesting to see how we all skin the cat as it were. And trust me, you don’t want my voice in your head! 🙂
Scheduling is good and I try to stick with it. My biggest challenge is being the social critter that I am, when I’m online it seems there is always one more person to talk to; one more thing to do.
Being in outside sales I have total flexibility; however, I have to be disciplined enough to get the right things done.
Entering my 5th month from being ‘all in’, the scheduling is becoming much easier for me. I’m learning everything doesn’t have to be done ‘right now’.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Bill! The depth of online involvement is exactly why I try to cap my time. I could stay online 24/7 and still not get “done.” as Admiral Ackbar says, it’s a trap!”
Margie and Bill, I just couldn’t help singing Elvis – “I’m caught in a trap…I can’t get out…because I love you too much baby…” That’s what your comments brought to mind:) Cheers! Kaarina
Real simple answer: I don’t. When I want to sleep in, I do. When I want to read content and go through email and tweet stuff, I do. And when I want to see what Katniss is up to in the Hunger Game series, well I just do that too. I have things I do everyday as goals. Today I tasked myself with writing a guest post for a friend, writing a post for my own blog, setting up google analytics on my blog and finally getting around to that gmail account and figure out some insurance claim thing. While I dont schedule out my time unless someone else is involved, I do set priorities for my day and that’s how I know I did what I needed to do. If it takes me longer to write a blog or I cannot figure out the google settings in wordpress, I dont fret that I went over my time allocated. But that’s just me and I can see scheduling work really well for lots of people.
And…what’s blobbing out?
Hi Christine! I really envy you because I have always wanted to be able to work that way. It just doesn’t seem to work out for me. I think I just like to be able to cross things off the to-do list as frequently as possible.
Blobbing just means doing nothing of import, like watching a movie 🙂
Ok, first.. gonna have to watch that movie again as I liked it. Second, I block my time sometimes by days than hours. Some days are WORK days and I get as much done as I can; I’ll multitask and add on, often working into the wee hours to have something marked off the list before I go to bed. Kinda like w/ travel.. I’d much rather go 1st thing in AM or late at night, so my whole day isn’t blown.
Hmm.. I also flex time and when I’m not feeling it, I do something else like laundry. When I feel the blog kick at midnight I write, when I’m up to tinkering with WordPress, I pour a stiff drink before I break the Internets. I like blobbing out.. aka quality time with the DVR. FWIW.
No surprise that it seems you have a terrific system in place, Davina. It also sounds like you are a bit like me-we are fans of beating those tasks of ours into submission 🙂
I really enjoy reading your posts and I try to keep up with all of them so I don’t fall behind! So, that tells you that I definitely need to work on my balancing act! Perhaps it’s because I’m a “newbie” blogger, but I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time working on posts, etc. I ‘m really in awe of you, Margie–you work, post, tweet, probably manage to eat 3 square meals a day….and still find time to see a movie! ツ Really, I have yet to see A Boy! I’m grateful that you followed me back on Twitter; I feel like I’m in the loop by being “around” your group of friends! x
You’re right, Margie. This topic is EVERYWHERE right now. I think it’s because of Google+ and because we’re in the dog days of summer. There is a summer slump with blogging a bit and I think folks don’t want to spend as much time online because they’re on vacation or would rather spend it outside.
All that aside, yes, scheduling is crucial. I’ve been using timers and that works well for me. I think it’s way to easy for activities to eat up your whole day if you’re not careful. I try to give myself chunks of time too. Even writing blog posts can take hours for me because I’m a perfectionist.
A smart friend of mine encouraged me to write down my tasks and then assign an amount of time to work on them. I think my frustration is that I always think I can get more done in the time I have. But, once I start looking at the time it will take, I realize I try to cram too much in. Thinking through how much time you need for each task helps you become more realistic with your expectations.
I certainly don’t have this all figured out. It’s a work in progress for sure. Great topic. Hopefully, we can all help each other get a handle on this!
Margie,
Yes – i do feel like social media is eating my brain… LOL
I think every day is a work in progress.. I have daily – weekly and monthly guidelines but we have to be nimble in our #worklifemerge !
Great post, @judymartin8
I use a priority management approach. Before I retire each evening, I identify the top 3 priorities for the next day, block them into time slots, and commit to them the following day. Everything else has to fit around those priorities…which means I get the important things done first. I’m by no means perfect at it, but over the years I’ve become pretty darn good at it. Keeps me sane: keeps me focused on the important stuff, not the “busy” stuff. Cheers! Kaarina