Ahhh, the eternal struggle. How does someone balance all of their obligations and cram 30 hours in a 24 hour day?
I stumble and fall but I find that most of my lessons are learned when I get back up. No one likes a frazzled and stressed person! The time has come that I put more personal responsibility into my schedule instead of filling it up with more and more project work. If I can’t be relied upon to take care of myself, how will my clients be able to trust that I can take care of my managed aspects of their business?
With this realization, I have decided to be proactive, rather than blindly placing the blame on external factors. The only way to achieve happiness is to manage what you can control…and, chances are, you can control your environment. For example, I can’t blame anyone else for my over-committed schedule but myself! The key to balancing obligations is to never actually attempt to cram 30 hours into a 24 hour day. It means breaking up chunks of work into manageable pieces so that the right amount of time can be devoted to each project. It means saying “no” to projects that you are disinterested in. It means that you have to plan fairly far in advance and to stick to your goals in the face of procrastination, laziness, and sloth in general.
Jon Bernstein, the author of The Power of The Notebook, says that when you write down your goals you are more inclined to put a plan of action together to achieve them. Here are my goals for the remainder of the 2010 year:
- Maintain a regular exercise regimen and train for a 5K
- Delegate tasks to my employees at Unicorn Press and trust that they have the judgment to get them done properly
- Be more disciplined and focused with my masters’ program classes
- Make it a habit to answer every email in a timely manner.
- Regularly go “off-the-grid” to recharge my batteries (no pun intended)
Let’s see how well I commit to these goals!
Amara in Training 