In the Age of Knowledge in which we live, it is easy to get consumed by work and forget about our personal lives. After all, there is always more to do, right? But as the old saying goes: “No one lay down on their deathbed and wished they had spent more time in the office!”
Here are some tips for striking the right balance between your work (especially for knowledge workers and infopreneurs) and personal life:
1. Decide what is most important to you, long-term, in your life. An exercise that can help bring this into focus is to write your eulogy, really! What would you like people to say about you when you’re dead? Whatever it is, notice how much you pursue that quality, goal, or cause in your life. If you’re not doing it now, or not as much as you’d like, how could you start looking for it more?
2. Create a vision for your ideal lifestyle. They say that “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Unless you create a vision statement for your work and personal life, just the way you want it to be, you won’t know when you’ve arrived! You will find yourself “striving but never getting there.” So write a descriptive statement of what you want your schedule to look like, your work space, your home, your clients, your relationships, your body, everything in your life, as if you were writing it for a movie producer. So, go about the business of producing your life!
3. When you are working, work; when you’re playing, play. If every time you leave your office (even if it’s in the spare room!) you still think about work, leave your work cell phone on, or check email later at night, you’re not drawing boundaries between work and play. That means it doesn’t get the full benefit of its “idle” time… and it doesn’t recharge the internal batteries that allow it to do what it does well. Spend work time working and playing fully when you’re away from work… you’ll have more energy and more joy this way.
4. Avoid multitasking. I know it’s hard! But studies show that people are only 40 percent more productive when doing more than one thing at a time than if they focus on one thing at a time. Give your full attention to whatever you’re doing, or whoever you’re talking to (!), and then move on to the next task. Live intentionally, one task and segment at a time. The quality of your life will improve, you will do more quality work, and you will build quality relationships that will flourish in the light of your undistracted focus.
5. Plan your free time in advance. How many days a week would you like to work? How many vacations will you take this year? If you don’t set it aside early, work commitments are likely to eat up the time that would have been taken. Most infopreneurs should plan for a minimum, even freshman year, of two to four weeks off during the year. Include it in your rates and lock it in advance. You’ll be glad you did!
6. Implement at least two to three “power hours” each work day. The typical coach and infopreneur is distracted for much of the day. “Power hours” are when you write a list of at least 5 priority tasks, set a timer, and focus on nothing but those tasks during that hour. No email, no phone calls, no distractions. And you get them! Start with a goal of at least two of these each day.
7. Set goals for both your work and personal life. Take a moment to review your calendar (Palm, Outlook calendar, wall calendar, etc.) for the last month or year, see how many of the entries relate to your work. If you’re like most people, 75 to 90 percent of the content will be work or business related! Begin the practice of setting at least one goal for your personal life and one for one of your relationships each day, along with your work goals. That in itself will increase the balance in your life immediately!
8. Delegate as much as you can. If you’ve used our rate-setting formula in my book, Start Your Rate-Setting Practice, then you know what your time is valued at: it’s your hourly labor rate. To the extent that you’re doing something that can’t be billed at that rate, you should find a way to delegate it as quickly as possible! That includes running to the post office, the office supply store, and Fedex; update your website; answer routine inquiries; remove spam from your email account; answering the phone; and many other tasks. Your goal is to have as much income-generating time as possible during your dedicated work hours.
9. Exercise regularly. When I interviewed people who had mastered transition for my Simon & Schuster book on the subject, one theme stood out: Each of these people exercised regularly during the normal times of their lives, and even more so during times of stress and transition. Virtually all successful infopreneurs share this trait, which is why major hotel chains have upgraded their training facilities so significantly for traveling infopreneurs.
10. Meditate and activate a connection with the God of your understanding. Feeling connected to something larger than oneself can help put the challenges of everyday work and life into perspective in a way that nothing else can. By implementing a daily meditation practice to achieve a calm, centered state and a connection with your Higher Power, you will find that you can maintain this state even when life becomes difficult. It has also been shown to improve health!
To learn more about work/life balance and the other 8 components of Career Infopreneur Success, look out for Marcia’s new book in June and plan to attend her Career Coaching Boot Camp on June 22nd. Watch [http://www.careercoachingbootcamp.com] for details on the event and the next two free preview calls. For more information on career coaching, visit http://www.careercoachinstitute.com