How to transform your work / life balance
By B
I believe one of the
biggest challenges we all face is creating a harmonious balance
between work and the rest of life. Time is precious; we
can’t extend or replace it, and we all want to do more, with
less. We strive to achieve in our professional lives and
seek happiness in our personal lives. We hold high
expectations of ourselves, and others expect just as much from
us. Too much focus on the professional or the personal
inevitably negativly affects the other. To maintain our
balance, we need a high level of positive energy, a positive
state of mind, and to keep perspective.- What is important to you?
- How much time is available between your work and home life?
- How many responsibilities or roles do you hold?
- How do your daily activities impact people around you?
How to change the ways you spend your time
Mini Mission 7: Turn off the TV and do something more interesting instead
By Nadia
How much time do you spend each week watching crap on TV,
fiddling around on
Facebook,
sorting
your emails, loitering round the water cooler (!)
or generally
faffing
around?
Lots? Us too.
So, continuing on our mission to make time for the things we love, (and channelling the classic 80s kids programme Why Don't You?!) let's all have a bash at this.
Mini Mission 7: Turn off the TV and do something more interesting instead.
This week, turn off the TV, close your computer or ditch
the magazines for at least 30 minutes.
I wonder what we'll all find time
to do....
And I wonder, if we'll actually miss our daily trash fix that
much!
Let us know how you get on,
Nadia x
Mini Mission 6: Ease Off!
By Nadia
This month we're all about focussing on what's important to
maximise the impact we have on the world.
But there's something stopping us. Perfectionism.
Do you ever
spend
hours on a piece of work, fiddling and tweaking until it’s
completely perfect?
Err yes!
Is it really worth
the extra effort and do your
efforts get you noticed?
Hmmmm.
I wonder, what would happen if we eased off a little and were
just good enough, rather than trying to be perfect?
Mini Mission 6: Ease
off!
This week, let's all have a go at
doing something that is just good enough.
How do you feel about the fact that it might not be
perfect?
What did you do with the time you saved?
What was the impact?
Let us know how you get on,
Nadia xx
How to get the best out of your most productive hours
By Tara
Do you work best before breakfast?
Does your brain start whizzing around late at night?
Tara Sophia Mohr looks at how to
make the most of when your brain's at its
best.Between 5am and 7am, my mind is different. Life looks different. I have access to longer, sustained focus. I’m more likely to feel the miracle of the world, and well up with tears from it.
Between 7am and 8am, I’ve still got a shot at writing, but there’s more resistance, more mundane stuff tempting me.
After 8:30 or so, if I haven’t written, the appointments I know are coming in a couple hours start to crowd into my mind, the noise of the world gets louder, and it’s likely to be one of those days when all kinds of emails and logistics get done, but very little writing, very little deep creative work.
I’m not certain why the early morning hours have the power they do for me. I think it has something to do with the quiet of the world at this hour, the stillness I see when I look out of the window. I really do feel, in those hours, like the world and being alive are glorious secrets, and I get to witness them.
I think it also has something to do with being closer to the realm of sleep and dreams, which is why I always try to write as soon as possible after rising.
Third, I think it’s genetic. I think we all have unique biological rhythms that impact when we have the physical, cognitive, emotional energy to create, and when our spiritual channel is most open. My mother is also an early morning creator, and we both turn off, mentally, at about 9pm.
For all of us, there are “best hours” for whatever important things we do in our lives. There are best hours for creative work. Best hours for the work that requires sharp focus and deep thought. There are best hours for being present to and generous to our loved ones.
For me, the dance is to honor that, and not get too caught up in it.
It is to arrange my life so that I get to do things during their best hours. That means speaking up for my needs, setting boundaries, establishing routines, and often, departing from the herd – doing things on a different schedule than friends or clients, and being okay with that.
But my work is – just as much – to not beat myself up or panic when it I don’t get to do things in their optimal times – when I end up sending emails during my best “big picture thinking” hours, or using my most alert and creatively inspired hour to wait for the repair man, because hey, that’s how things worked out that day. The fearful, ever-panicking part of my brain can turn the simple truth that early morning is best for writing into “TARA, YOU HAVE TO GET WRITING BY SIX A.M. OR YOU HAVE FAILED YOURSELF” or, at 10pm, “IF WE DON’T GO TO BED IN THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES, I WILL BE FOREVER CREATIVELY DOOOOOOOMED. Not so helpful, those thoughts.
But I do know, that I really love to write, and that writing happens for me much more fluidly and easily in the morning. I have the sense that I have access to better material then. So I do what I can to make it possible. If you're having trouble getting out from under the duvet and getting productive, here are some tips:
1. Try not to schedule appointments before 10am, because before that is writing time. Of course, sometimes an appointment needs to happen in that window, and if it does, I try not to worry about it too much.
2. Do your very best to go to bed by 10pm. This is a fabulous way to practice, everyday, setting boundaries and speaking up for my needs.
Hip person: “Want to meet for a dinner at x hot new restaurant at 9?”
Me: “Well…how about dinner at 6….or tea at 4?”
But sometimes, a big desire to watch a second episode of The Good Wife gets in the way. Or a late dinner with friends that I really do want to go to. Or being wide awake for who knows what reason. But as much as I can make it work, I do bed by 10pm, or even 9:30pm. I get my best rest when I go to sleep early, and it sets the stage for early morning writing.
3. “Conclude” the day at night, and create space for tomorrow. That could take any of a wide variety of forms: straightening up the home office from the day’s activity so there is a physical “clean slate” for the day, making a to-do list for the next day, reviewing the day in my mind and thinking about the significant moments, making a list of things I’m grateful for from the day, saying a prayer.
So the questions for all of us are:
• In whatever activities are most important to you, are there “best hours” for them? If you don’t know, experiment with doing them during different windows and find out.
• What can you do to set up your life so that you get to do those important things during their best hours? (Hint: you will probably need to be courageous in setting boundaries and creative in thinking about how to rearrange things in ways you haven’t previously considered, and that may be unconventional)
• What’s a truly helpful-to-you way to respond when it doesn’t work out – when you don’t get to use best hours the way you’d like? Instead of beating yourself up, how can real and loving curiosity about what happened and what you might do differently help you? What does it look like to respond with lightness of heart?
Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer and coach. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can sign up for her free Goals Guide, "Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want) ” by clicking here.
Top Five Tips for Beating Procrastination, by Rachel Bamber
By Emily
Sick
of putting stuff off till tomorrow and then realising you’ve
achieved nothing at the end of the week? Rachel Bamber, life
coach with Brighter Thinking, has some handy hints for out-foxing
your brain and getting things done.
Rate
the importance of tasks
Firstly, find out if the task is something that you really want
to do or is important. Visualise what your life will be like
having completed it. Otherwise, if it is less important and you
find that you keep putting off this task, think about whether you
really need to do it at all. If you don’t, quit feeling guilty
about it!
Ask
yourself: Why don’t I want to do it now?
We all know the familiar excuses - “I don’t know where to start”,
“I’m going to hate doing it” or my old favourite, “I haven’t got
time!”. Once you know what your excuse is, work out how you can
overcome it. Do you need to break the task down into smaller
steps? Ask for help? Do you need to give yourself a reward? Do
you need to give yourself a deadline with the time available
right now and just get started? Beat the excuse instead of
letting it beat you.
Schedule
your time
Go back to school and create a colourful timetable, scheduling in
all your activities each day for the week. Think about when you
are naturally most productive and allocate particular tasks
accordingly. Include checking email, breaks, treats and time for
working on your goals. Create the new habit of only doing your
chosen activities in the designated time-slots. Be disciplined
with this and your productivity will go through the roof!
Do
the end first! 
Now
I love writing. But when I was writing this article I was feeling
that I should be doing something else instead. This is
another classic cause of procrastination. To help me complete my
task of writing three articles, I started by writing an email to
Emily at MoreToLifeThanShoes.com stating “As promised, please
find the three articles attached...” and saved it to my email
drafts. Our brains like order, completing actions and solving
puzzles, so writing my email as if I’d done the work alerted my
brain to the fact that I hadn’t ... and it didn’t like it! It was
using energy and space in its working memory, so my unfinished
task was literally on my mind. When you leave a pile of ironing
(zzz!) on your kitchen table, the same effect occurs. The ironing
is ‘winking’ at you every time you walk past. If you were then to
get the ironing board out as well, you would be more likely to
complete the task later, rather than put it off tomorrow.
Break
it down and make a plan
Rome wasn’t built in a day, so the saying goes. Faced with a big
task, you may feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. This is
bound to put you off getting started. Sit down and make a plan.
Divide the task into smaller actions and choose when you would
like to do them. Identify any that you need help with completing.
Making a start, however small, will make you feel better about
tackling the whole thing, and less intimidated.
Forget about it being perfect I originally had ten top tips for this article, and started to worry about choosing tips that were THE definitive top five. Arghhh, the perils of perfectionism! I stopped thinking about getting the perfect five, listened to my intuition and chose the five that seemed the best at the time. So if you find yourself succumbing to perfectionism, just do the task and do the ‘perfecting’ parts later. For example, when writing a document start writing: do the formatting and prettifying later.
Happy doing and completing!
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