How do you choose to schedule your time? Consciously? Or does your day happen by accident? How do you balance work and leisure? Strategic and non-strategic work? How do you spend your time, and are you the one making the decisions?
Here’s my approach. Each week I plan the following week in detail and sketch out a plan for the following month. Part of my weekly review and planning session includes asking myself four questions:
- Am I on moving towards my OKRs? (my goals)
- Could I have been more effective?
- Could I have taken better care of myself?
- What can I do differently going forward?
This article takes a deeper dive into some of those questions.
Work versus leisure
Am I investing the majority of my time and energy in creating a better future? By this I mean moving projects forward, checking off tasks, meetings, emails, getting things done?
How much time do I spend living in the moment?
If I am focused on the future, when am I actually present in the here and now? When am I taking the time to enjoy the future I created yesterday?
What does living in the moment and being present mean to me? I love training in acrobatic circus arts, which definitely keeps me absorbed in the moment. Circus provides an environment for me to collaborate creatively with others, and demands constant learning and teaching. I’m definitely present when I’m working at the edge of my abilities or throwing a partner in the air and catching them again.
I try to schedule something positive that I love into my day every day.
In addition to daily ‘jewel’ activities I also have a list of whole-day leisure activities! The next two on my list are to ride my motorbike in the Scottish highlands and kite surfing off the west coast from my camper.
What’s on your daily list, and what’s on your day-off list? What system have you put in place to make sure they happen?
You may love taking walks with friends, spending time with family, going to the movies, playing guitar, or painting. I find so much value in ensuring I have life in my day and making that a priority.
Consciously choosing our life
If we are privileged enough to choose how we spend our time and are not just trying to survive either financially or physically, we can choose our priorities.
Like most people with a smartphone, I am very capable of finding myself doom scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. I’m pretty good with most of those these days, except YouTube, the edutainment centre of my day. I pay the monthly fee to escape the incessant adverts, but whatever happens, do not click on YouTube shorts. That’s half an hour lost there straight away!
Social media is more of an escape than actual leisure time. If my screen time report is anything to go by, I could have scheduled time for something that was actually leisure, something that would make me feel good, rather than getting dopamine hits from an algorithm. I find something objectionable about surrendering my time and attention to someone else’s agenda - people who have made it a business to profit from me. If I plan in advance there is less chance of needing to escape and more chance of positive choices.
In discussing my system recently I’ve been using a famous analogy of the best way to fill a jar. Start with the big stones first, then the little ones, then add sand and then water. This feels to me like a great system of prioritisation.
For me, I’m greedy. I want to start by adding at least one significant-sized jewel in my day every day. Probably something circusy. After that, I want to schedule deep work on my strategically important projects. These are the big stones in my jar, my personal and professional OKRs. Yes, I have personal OKRs!
If I can move one of my OKRs forward each day I regard it as a success. I aim for three daily objectives, sometimes I make it, but I don’t put pressure on myself if not.
Next on the list are my growth habits, meditation, taiji, physical training, breath work and learning time - my small stones, the atomic habits that incrementally move me forward in my skills and abilities.
The water and sand? That’s the meetings, emails, and admin of my day. Sometimes meetings are the big stones of my day, but big stone meetings are definitely in the minority.
A trusted system
Creating a trusted system makes work-life balance possible and ensures I don’t drop essential tasks while having a life. The cost to this is that I have to dedicate a small amount of time each week to a review and planning session, one of the maintenance tasks in my trusted system. Making time to establish my boundaries and create balance is more than worth it.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” James Clear, Atomic habits
Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash
