How to walk the time tightrope
A Project Manager's ultimate guide on optimizing your time to achieve true balance - and the basic framework that'll help you achieve it
I’ll admit it - I’m a productivity addict.
When it comes to scheduling, I’ve seen the YouTube videos, and I’ve read the books. There’s plenty of workaholics who ironically tout the importance of work-life balance, yet never actually achieve it. Some deny it even exists – any shame those who seek it as someone who lacks a hunger for success.
I believe that’s complete and utter shit. All of the above has merit, but a little nuance needs to be applied to it. There will undoubtedly be moments in your career where you need to double down on the hours invested into your work; to get a project over the line, finish off some additional training or go the extra mile for a last minute client request. All of these are absolutely fine to prioritise over everything else in your life for a short time, but shouldn’t become a permanent practice in any regard. Those who tell you about how hard they’re working only do so in an attempt to compensate for utterly failing as pursuing the other half – and equally essential – part of life that crafts one worth living, and one to be truly proud of.
This practice should be seen as seasonal, at best. Once or twice a year at most really. If every season becomes productivity season though, then you’ll eventually suffer the burnout, depression or the other mental health conditions they attract. And then you’ll be taking an extended sabbatical to counteract it. If you’re reading that and reeling at it, yelling at the screen that I don’t get it, and I’m just not working hard enough, then that’s fine. I’m confident you will realise eventually about the personal opportunities you forego in an attempt to achieve every professional one you have a chance at.
And herein lies the concept of the work-life balance. Instead of hammering the extremes of the double down work, followed by the double recoil sabbatical to recover from it, a steady and sustainable approach to diary management is really the pinnacle of success. Equilibrium, where you enjoy going to work as much as you enjoy leaving it.
So why is it so hard to achieve? It’s a concept which very, very few every truly get right. But there are a few pointers to consider:
We think of balance as a 50:50 split, but that’s a bit simplistic. Your work-life balance may be split 70:30 if you’re single, with a bit more spare time. It may be 20:80 if you’re a parent with a part time job. The ratio doesn’t necessarily matter, but it should create an equilibrium which you shouldn’t ever feel the need to deviate from to achieve a better state. This is not a one-way street either – it’s about finding a ratio where you still add value to your employed (or self-employed position), and not neglecting your parent or family duties either – being present for your partner, your parents, siblings and friends. Finding this can only occur through experimentation, and such an experiment is the most worthwhile exercise one can pursue.
Use a Diary to Delete Deviation – It can be easy to stay late for an extra hour or two to finish of your piece of work, and it can be easy to tell yourself you need to also. When another 6 hours have been added onto the working day and you come home to get straight into bed, to simply wake up and do it all over again, then you need to be honest that you can’t trust yourself to discipline the allocation of your time. The hack is hardwiring it into your diary. Just as important as scheduling your meetings is scheduling your personal time. Even better, make plans so you can’t deviate from the commitment. You can go as far as you like – schedule your commute, your gym workout, cooking your dinner. Just get into the habit of scheduling everything.
The bonus trick to assess your balance is to colour code items in your schedule. One colour for work related tasks, another for personal. If your diary is awash with one prominent colour, you’ll know that you’ve got the balance wrong.
Rigid is fine, but dynamic is better – Allocate free periods in each day, which can be given to work or personal tasks. If an unexpected delay or work problem crops up and you need an extra hour to deal with it, then you’ve got it. But if not, then use this time to do something personal – and if you’ve got no idea, then allocate this time to either helping someone else or doing something new. Workaholics end up that way because they haven’t yet found something they value as much as their work. So if you don’t know what else you value, use this time to explore and find it. It’s about that key concept – finding things so you look as forward to leaving work equally as much as you do going to it.
Analogue is nice, but digital really is better – I operated a paper diary for years, and I loved doing so. However, when it comes to scheduling, I really don’t think any analogue method matches the digital forms now. Even free tools such as Google Calendar will allow you to apportion time and colour code items; and also you can amend, move or adjust it as you go if a client cancels a meeting, or you need to play with how items fit in together. There are project management tools which take this one step further – apps such as Asana, Trello, Motion or Evernote are also good pieces of software which can be used as a diary, and come with even more tools.
I take all of this one step further, and basically manage my whole life in Notion - I’ll so another post on how I set that up at some point.
TH