Seriously, you only have 168!
How Are You Spending Them?
Time. It’s the essence of our being. Schedules, deadlines, expirations. How you choose to spend your months, weeks, minutes and seconds can be a tumultuous task.
What does your breakdown look like?
Let’s take out the hours we know for sure or use a best guess scenario:
ONE WEEK SCHEDULE SAMPLE FOR WORK|LIFE|BALANCE
Task | Time Spent | Scenario/Variance
Work — 40 Hours — Based on a full time job(9–5)
Sleep — 56 Hours — Based on 8 hours per night
Exercise — 7 Hours — 1 hour, 7 days/week
Social — 8 Hours Date Night (4) hours, Networking (4) hours
Self-Care — 5.5 Hours Based on 30 minutes/day — (reading/quiet escape/meditation)
Family — 35 Hours Based on 5 hours/day (morning/afternoon/evening combined)
Friends — 3 Hours Based on one — two visits
Spiritual — 1.5 Hours Based on your interpretation of spirituality/attending church
Total Hours — 156 Hours
Does this look like your weekly Work|Life|Balance equation?
Based on this scenario above you have 12 hours still left in your week. How would you spend the remainder of your hours? It seems like a high number but try completing this list and see what your total is. You may find that your goal is over 168 hours.
Please note that when I am working one-on-one with my private mentoring clients the above chart changes for shift workers, health care professionals, firefighters, police service personnel and entrepreneurs. It’s a mindful exercise that takes time to implement. and no two schedules are identical.
Mama Deb has created a template for you to use. You can download it HERE.
Work|Life|Balance takes patience, practice and constant assessment to achieve what will work for you. It will constantly be changing, however, if you have a plan in place you are setting the foundation.
Each element of Work|Life|Balance can change from week to week. Life happens and so do emergencies.
A perfect example of this is work. Your employer may offer you overtime and/or you have to work on a statutory holiday.
Sleep, yes we would all love to have 8 hours of beautiful, deep sleep but most people are walking around on serious sleep deprivation.
Exercise, it’s a must. You have to move your body every day and get your heart rate up! It is the best modality for stress reduction and helps you sleep!
Social time is very important as it allows you to connect with your friends and just have fun! Laughter is the best medicine and you must find the time to connect as it is and can also be an element of your self-care as well!
Family should and always come first. With hectic, busy schedules and each family member heading in a different direction, embrace the “pre-school” moments and “after-school” time if you have the privilege to do so. With many families who have both parents working full time this makes the dinner hour and evening hours even more special.
There is no schedule or Work|Life|Balance equation that is set in stone or is ‘perfect’. This is a very personal exercise which is why I wanted to provide you with a template to use. Being open to review, assess, analyze and reorganize your time is key here. The goal is to ensure that each element of your life is given time each day. It’s going to take a few days to modify and truly implement a new Work|Life|Balance, however, if you stick with it for 3 weeks, a new habit (schedule) will be completed and now exercised every day!
I’ve also created Mama Deb’s 12 Tips for Work|Life|Balance. You can download HERE. Feel free to print it off and put it beside your computer at work or on the front of your refrigerator. I encourage you to share this with others in your life and let’s all get balanced together.
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