Balance

Many people when they hear the word balance think of a scale making sure that both sides are equal. Instead, think of it more in terms of a budget having a balanced budget. This means that we want to underspend our time rather than doing what most people do which is overspend time going into debt and paying interest. There are three things that you can do to better maintain a time balance. First at all, understand the truth of time. The truth of time is there are only 24 hours in a day.

There are only 60 minutes in an hour, and no matter what you do, you cannot change that. This leads to principle 2 which is use one calendar. Many people have multiple calendars and some people have no calendar at all. You want to make sure that you have one calendar because that will show you the balance of how much time you have remaining. Then Number 3 is under-spend the amount of time that you have. Rather than trying to pack every  single minute full of activity, try to leave 5 minutes out of every hour that's unused. That will leave room for you to take action on unexpected interruptions and also help you be more relaxed. So now that I've shared with you the principle of having a balanced time budget, what's one at ion that you can take? Write that action down.

Balancing between work and personal time. When I talk establishing a time budget, it begins with the line in the sand. The line in the sand is that time where you're going to stop work and start your personal life each day. Now some people pride themselves on their ability to work as long as it takes working long hours. This misses out on a great opportunity. The opportunity is to build systems to be more productive. And to also be more rested each day. My personal line in the sand is 5pm. That's when my kids come in and tell me it's time to play. Now you start and stop time may be different. It can be 5pm or 6pm or 7pm or whatever time. The point is that you have a commitment to a particular time and you stick to it.