Work-Life Balance

09 In this way, work and life can complement each other

Blessings from California in the United States. My name is Elaine Kung. We continue with Work-Life Balance series, number nine. We’ve be working on effective time management techniques, and we're working through the six ‘S’.

And now we're gonna focus on number four, seeking to do the right things in the right way. Because our time is always limited, it's so important to do the right thing in the right way. So that way, the right thing gives us effectiveness, the right way gives us efficiency. So, this time we basically integrate what we learned before and put them into practice. We start with goal setting. Remember, we want to set life goals to help chart our life course and our career path. And then that's a big picture. Then we divide the life goal into smaller goals, baby steps, and then translate them into daily to-do lists, and then revise and update the list based on everyday progress and evaluate. Remember, the Plan, Do Check, Act, we talked about last time? And that way you can improve your performance.

And then when we have these goal setting and break them down into smaller goals, start with two. Don't think about ten things, start with two goals that really reflect and align to what's important to you, and that’s your priorities. Write them down very specifically, and put dates to them, and see when we want to get them done. Remember, SMART goals. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound things that identify the benefits, because that give us the reason, the rationale, and the motivation of setting these goals. And look at them regularly, so we are reminded, why am I doing it? What am I doing? When do I need to finish?

So that way, summarize what we learned before about goal setting. Make sure the goals are worthwhile, align to my value, to my purpose, begin with any mind. Visualize it, draw a picture, so we can see, yes, it's gonna happen. That's the reason I’m gonna do it. And then remember the smart goal, making sure they're very specific and simple. Don't make it too complicated, so that the goal statement is positive, it's clearly stated, it's concise and is prescriptive with call to action. It's measurable, always have a number tied to it. Whether it’s how much revenue, how much time, how much cost savings, what percentage of improvement, or how many people, how many days? So, there’s always a number tied to it. And it's attainable, it's achievable, it’s not high in the sky, so it’s something I can see it happening. And then relevant, right? It's so aligned, relevant to my life goals, life value and then set a time bound to it.

Number 4, share these goals with the supporters, and my accountability partners, my family members, my management, my leadership, my subordinate. So that way, we all contribute and join in and encourage one another, and it's the same goal that we work toward. Number 5, limit your goals to a few at a time, don't try to do ten things, do 2-3 tasks. And then remember the benefits, right? That's the payoff. Why am I doing it? Because it's gonna help improve our productivity, because it's gonna help improve our relationship.

And a reminder on how we gonna set our goals, aligned to our priority based on President Eisenhower decision matrix. He is the 34th President of the United States. And when he had to make decisions, he came up with how to manage your priority and time. This is according to what we call Q1, upper left, when it's very important and also very urgent. I need to do those first. Action, we need to do them right away, because it's urgent and important.

And then on the upper right, it's not so urgent and yet it's important, so I want to do those next. And these are actually the most favorable time to spend on. We want those to be 60 to 80%. And then the lower left is quadrant three. It's not so important but seems urgent, because people are calling us or knocking on the door. Those may seem urgent, but it's not that important, so do those later. Finally, quadrant 4, lower right corner. It's not urgent, it's not important. What do we do? Don't do them, delete those. So that's a very good way to remember, align, our goals, our task to Q1 and Q2, and then try to lower priority for Q3 and don't even have any priority for Q4.

So here are some more examples. Important and urgent Q1 would be some deadlines, crisis, or cramming for exams or due dates, emergency, very important. Last minute fire drill preparation. We need to do those right away, and we want to minimize to maybe about 20% of our time. Because the more you do in quarter one, urgent and important, the more stressed you are, and then the quality of your work could suffer.

So, we want to spend most of our time on Q2 important, but not urgent. This is when we can improve ourselves. These are things that we are proactive, that we are able to do before it's a problem. So, we can be more proactive and even predictive, so we can be more preventive, because we know prevention is better than cure. Such as reading lecture notes to prepare for your exam, personal development, education, or even physical training, our health, exercise. Plan how to study, and plan our time, our goals, the fact that we are learning this series on work-life balance, that's part of Q2 is not urgent and yet important. And you get benefits. You have good R.O.I., return on investment.

Quadrant three, not important and may seem urgent. Some of the emails, phone calls, a lot of interruption. And some popular activities, perhaps watching tv or everyone going out and have a good time. You can do some of those, but don't overdo them or some meetings. And then remember quadrant four, not important, not urgent. So those are trivial, some phone calls that is not important, or some spam call or some marketing call and such. Or way too much tv or surfing online and became like a caveman and always locked yourself down. Addiction to online, especially during the pandemic that could be dangerous. And then a lot of time wasters. We don't want to do those; we want to delete these.

Then a few more examples, when you're looking at what's quadrant one that is doing them immediately like we talked about. And then quadrant 2 you, plan to do important goals, very important to maximize those times, so that it's all planning and improving yourself. And in quadrant three are those that we want to delegate and reschedule, because their interruptions we don't want to take too much time on those. And finally, quadrant 4 we want to avoid and discard because they're mostly distractions. So these are very helpful for us to know how to set boundary and not get distracted. Always work toward quadrant two, that's the most important.

After we have good goals, understand our priority, now we want to plan, draw up an action plan and a step-by-step list of things to do toward achieving that goal. So, in the U.S. we have this joke. What is the most common list used in the U.S. household? It's called honey-do list because it’s a checklist for our spouse (honey). But this is important to have a checklist on what would work toward your goal.

So, I'm going to introduce you to some tools, how to work through your list. We first learn this L.A.P., List, Allocate, and then Prioritize. So here are the examples of lists of things to do. I suggest you list out 3-5 important task in your calendar this week, every week. And then 3-5 urgent item in your calendar, because those are important and urgent to do. And then 3-5 wish lists. It may not get done, but it's at least something you try to put some attention to.

So, these are some examples. Important would be studying, doing a paper, and attending some clubs from a student perspective. And urgent, I have a summer internship I need to apply for, so there's a deadline. Or, I need to make some phone calls, call my family. Or I need to go get my glasses fixed. And an example of wish list, will be reading, family time, and dance. I would say family time probably not just a wish list. You should try to put it as important. So that’s listing.

Now we go allocating, allocate the time and be specific how you gonna use the time. So typically, we have a 24-hour day, and every week it's 168 hours a week. And then how much you're gonna sleep, eat, class. This is a student calendar example. And give yourself roughly how much time and these should align to your priority and how difficult the tasks are. And that gives you a very good idea on what percentage is your Q1, what percentage is the Q2? I know you may not do this all the time, but once in a while, do it as a good checkpoint.

Then you can prioritize and order the to do list according to the priority matrix that we talked about before. Then think about the value and the opportunity cost. If I take on this task, what may not get done? And is it the price I want to pay? And then you can make good decision and ask good questions, right? Is it worth spending my time my energy and resources to do this? And then, I want to tackle the big projects first and doing it first. And then, small baby step and can get good progress.

Then I want to plan and schedule, urgent things, do them first. Important things, we wanna give it more attention, more time, so I can do a good job. The wish list, maybe just squeeze some time, if I’m able. If not, that's okay, they're just wishful desires, right? And then here's some example. Important, I need to sleep 50 hours, study 46 hours, eat 19 hours, relationship is important and exercise. So, most of these could be Q2, important and not urgent. And then the urgent one need to allocate time for the deadlines to do lists. And the wish lists, only if I have time and reduce the internet time so that I can have more time to do some reading and volunteering and help others.

So, to summarize, you can see this mind map on how to focus in this age of distraction. Look through these different branches and the decision tree to help us how to work. Work in the focus first or get it all organized into the computer. How you manage your emails? How do you take time to reflect and reveal? Remember, the Plan, Do, Check, and Act on improving, and how to cut down all the addiction, especially online in games, and how to take a digital technology detox. So, spend time that you can quiet down and that you can stay away from electronic devices. Finally, how to manage your space and get things organized. So, this is a very good mind map. Take a picture of it, then you can go into detail what to do, check, what not to do, cross them out. That's all we have today to seek to do the right things in the right way. See you next time.

So we learn from Stephen Covey's book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, more specific examples on quadrant 1, do immediately, because they’re critical activities,  important and urgent. They’re top of your to-do list, deadline driven, cannot procrastinate. And we can minimize these by better planning and keep into Q2. Then we have space, we have margin for these unexpected crisis. And then Q2 is important and not urgent. These are the healthy habits, important goals that would help advance towards our priority. Has to be intentional in our plan and allow focus thinking and action that would improve our success without rushing and lead to more fulfillment.

Quadrant three, not important but seem urgent. We want to delegate and reschedule these interruptions. They could be time wasters that take time away from our important activities. Could be caused by others. We want to reschedule or delegate them, and set boundary, and schedule time for interruption like email and low value work separately, so you don't get distracted.

Finally, in the 4th quadrant, not important, not urgent. We want to avoid and discard those distractions, because these goals are probably helping others, not myself. While I want to help others, I want to clearly prioritize and set boundary and not get distracted on things that don't add value, and then get someone else to help with these. And we want to delete, so we don't procrastinate.

Reflections:

1. What is your focus right now? How long do you give yourself to achieve this goal?

2. Does your company or organization have a culture where everyone shares family life with each other? If not, do you want to try start with me?

3. Do you usually share some things at work with your family? How did they react?