People tend to make big plans when a new year starts, set up ambitious career goals, study goals or personal goals and then list action steps and a long to do list. Want to get promoted, want to get a professional credential, want to buy a cottage near the beach, want to travel to 10 most famous landmarks in the world. Wait, each goal will take a lot of resources including time, efforts, and money! Resources are always limited so how can we achieve all of our goals? Work harder! Work smarter! Be more productive! I think most people will say things like that.
I will personally suggest that when you start using your planner, your annual plan, monthly plan, weekly plan or even daily plan, be more selective about your goals and read through to dos before you just bury yourselves in work/studies. Just take a pause and see whether the workload itself is reasonable and only select those tasks that matters most to you. Be brave to give up something and prioritize what’s important in your life.
As a former consultant I used to start working early in the morning, focused on key tasks and work till midnight. Day after day when I cross off tasks on my to do list, I just feel frustrated to see that I still have tons of things that I haven’t completed yet. Have you ever had the same experience? Is it because we are not working productively or we are not working smart enough? Should we push ourselves even harder?
One day I was chatting with my counselor asking for his secrets to balance work and personal life as he needs to take more responsibilities and has more work to do than me. He told me a very simple thing that we all know about but are not necessarily good at – You should start being more selective! No matter how hard you work, keep trying different ways to be more productive, take less sleep hours so you have more time than others, in the end everyone just has 24 hours a day, no more no less. That means you can’t get everything done and you have to make a decision about what to pursue and what to give up.
Hold on a second, you may want to argue that everything is equally important to you and you basically just don’t want to give up anything. If you are struggling, well, friends, welcome to the adult world – yes, it’s never easy but sometimes you’ll be forced to make a decision. You are about to join a family party but your boss called you back to work, you are planning for an important client meeting but your friends need urgent help so on so forth. Everything is important but you have to make a decision – Work or Family? Clients or Friends? There’s no right or wrong decision, it’s simply your own choice that you need to take full responsibilities for. Unfortunately, no one can tell you what you should do because it’s your own life.
Still struggling to become more selective, these books may give you some inspiration:
- Off Balance: Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction
- A Woman Makes a Plan
- 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week
One important thing is that even though you start to face the reality and get to know the essence of life, both the good side and bad side, you still enjoy the expected and unexpected things in your life journey.
