Work-Life Balance

01 Where did the time go?

Manage time to keep work-life in balance and make ourselves purpose-driven.

I’m Elaine Kung, blessings from sunny California in the United States. We're so excited to start this new series on Work-Life Balance. I'm going to share from my decades of experience as a professional woman, working for 33 years for a major Fortune 500 companies, while very active in my church ministry and active in raising two adult children now, and all around even involved in my school for interviewing applicants to Cornell and Princeton. Now I have retired after 33 years, and during the COVID time, I actually have the opportunity to give 20-30 talks a month and also doing one-on-one coaching. So, I know how it is many hats that we're wearing and how do we wear them all. So I’m going to share with you my own experience.

If you look at this cartoon, it may seem a little funny and also seem very sad, because you wonder who is the master and who is the slave, right? Who is the boss? Is it me who is managing the time? Or am I chasing the time and getting really busy and being the slave to the time? So, the clock tells the runner and says: Plan to make time your partner, not the opponent. Because the runner feels very exhausted and wonder how I can be more effective in managing my time. So I want us to learn how to be the boss, to be master of time, so that we are wise in running the race in life, that we are not going to be blind running, not knowing where we're going, not having a purpose; or just crazy busy for not good satisfaction; or being bored, just not enjoying what you are doing with your time.

Let's do a quick reality check. Look at this woman. Can you imagine all the different devices that different roles you have to take and how stressful it is? So, let's ask ourselves, indeed, the company may demand us to work 9-9-6. From 9 am to 9 pm for 6 days, that's 12 hours a day for six days, 72 hours. Some even says 7-11. 7 days a week, 11 hours a day, that’s 77 hours a week. How can you possibly handle that? Then you may feel like: I tend to be on call around the clock, 24 hours a day I get a call from my customer, from my boss, from my coworkers. How can I set boundary in my work-life? I really struggle, not able to manage my time well, and not able to manage my stress well. So those could be the reality for some of us.

For the course of the next few lessons, we're going to learn, really having some good TIMES. T-I-M-E-S, good times to have better work-life balance. I prefer ‘rhythm’ over ‘balance’ and I'll tell you more in the future lessons. In the acrostic T-I-M-E-S, “T” is time management, for the purpose of having work-life rhythm. “I” is important to do the right thing using the right way for your right purpose. If you're busy doing the wrong thing or doing the right thing with the wrong way, it doesn't do you any good. “M”, missional life as a bi-vocation and purpose-driven life. What does it mean to live at bi-vocational missional life so that you are purpose driven? That's an important principle and passion for me. “E”, establish healthy habits, that really would help you manage time and stress. Because I have learned what's the most important in my life, that becomes part of my routine, becomes my healthy habits, so I have some secret weapons to share with you. Then “S”, ultimately we want to have spiritual maturity. My relationship with God, spiritual influence to myself, and influence upon my family and at work, so that we could achieve the goal and the purpose of joy at home and joy at work. So I will give you examples of what we've done and how well we've learned some things and how things may not work and how we have learned from those failures.

As we continue, look at these books, there are so many books you can learn about: “Time Management”, “First Thing First”, “The Power of Healthy Habits”, “Tell Your Time”.... so many books. The question is: is it just about books that we can study? So, it's a lot more than just the head knowledge. I always like this diagram when I give any talks or particular lesson. I want to make sure that we don't just read and learn about head knowledge. It's a lot more than that. We want to feel very convicted on what we read and feel passionate in our heart that we believe in, and I really want to do something about it. And that gets us to the hands that we can put it into practice, application with our hands. And finally, make that application as a healthy habit, not just doing it once, but doing it twice, 3 times and becoming internalized, and it's a healthy habits in our daily life. So, that is my “four H” on anything that I learned that could be a life application, transforming my life to be better. And even I worked for a communication company, I believe the “four H” is more important and powerful than the 5G. So, Head, Heart, Hands and Habits, and we are going to keep reminding ourselves: are we making a change on what we learn?

Now, let's do some definition on time. Do you believe working long hours equates to hard working? Not necessarily. If you work long hours, you're not being efficient or effective. You may not be hard working because you're not producing the result you need. How about if you leave work on time? And does it mean that you're not hard working? Not necessarily, right? If you go to work on time, leaving on time, and doing the right thing, doing the right way, working not just hard, but also work smart, you're effective, you're producing result. So sometimes, it doesn't mean that you have to spend a lot of time to achieve the result. It is how well you use your time, and what approach and what method you work.

And also, another question: is time the same as money? Or, which one is more valuable if you think about it? For money, you can save it. Time, we cannot reserve it, we cannot keep it for the future, we cannot save it. Money, you can have less or more; you can replace it with better relationship. But time, we cannot replace; every minute, every second goes by, it’s gone, you cannot reuse it. It cannot be redeemed again, you cannot earn again. You can earn money after you spend it. And you can budget your money and say: I have $100. I'm spending $5 today. I don't know how much to spend every day going forward. You can budget it. But time you cannot budget it. What happened is already gone, by gone be by gone. So, we need to be very wise and know that time is actually more valuable than your money. And time is not flexible, we cannot reverse it. So, that picture on the lower left could be misleading, thinking that we can put time in a piggy bank, but we cannot; we cannot save it. So, that's a good alignment and understanding, on definition of time.

With that in mind, look at all the challenges that we face. We got phone calls, conference calls. We have multiple hats we are wearing, really stressed and the long face; a lot of paperwork, really struggling and got buried with all the work that we are asked to do, more than we can handle.

So, why do we need to manage time? Because we are not able to manage all these endless demands. There are so many distractions from everywhere. Then sometimes when we get distracted, we may just drop what we're doing now and pay attention to the distractions, so we're not very productive. What are some typical sources of distractions? It could be the media, food, magazines, stress, or health condition. And then we work with the wrong ways. We need to learn to do the right thing in the right way. And there are many ways to skin the cat, so we can have different ways to finish a task. We want to focus on how to be efficient so that we are using the time well and fast, and also effective in doing the right thing and producing result. Those will be our good purpose and principle to consider.

How do we have work-life balance? How do we wear all the different hats and responsibilities? Whether you're working professional, you could be a mom, a dad, or child, taking care of elderly. We may be a Sunday school teacher at church. And we have more responsibilities than we have time for. So, how do we better manage our time, so that we can achieve both efficiency in the quantity that we can produce and effectiveness on the right thing that we do with quality. So actually, we all have 24 hours a day. So, it's not so much about managing time. It's really about managing ourselves and managing our lives.

And also, realize what are some common causes for time wasters. When we don't manage ourselves well, we tend to waste time in these eight areas. That is the acrostic, POOR PLAN.

P- procrastiantion. We may procrastinate, “P, we delay and lack the self-discipline: I would do it next week; I would do it next month;  then it becomes urgent. I know I am guilty of that.

O- over commitment. I spend time on things that I don't really need to do, or I'm committing more than my capacity can handle, and not knowing how to say no or set boundary.

O- online. We ended up living in the cave, hiding in our social media, getting on games, and that is very addicting and very dangerous.

R- regret on poor planning. With all these eight causes for time waster, we could be going on the wrong direction using the wrong method doing the wrong thing.

P- Perfectionism. I'm so guilty of that. I always want to put in extra time, ended up over investing time, not getting the necessary return and being very unrealistic with the standards and doing a lot of unnecessary finishing, not worth it. So, I'm learning to set boundary and accept to say 80%, 90% is good enough. Because another 10%, 20% time is not giving me the return.

L- Live with too much socializing. Because sometimes we overspend on fun things and talking, getting coffee and getting distracted. Before you know your morning is over. Having fun doing relationship is good and yet if you overspend the time and not having a purpose, then it's a time waster.

A- anxiety. When we are under pressure and we feel very panicking and feel losing control, then we're not being productive. And it's a very bad time waster.

“N” is not focused, easily distracted. I had a big problem when I worked on a project during my college year. It took me a long time to get into mood and get warmed up and ended up spending time on unnecessary work.

We want to remind ourselves that we want to have good TIMES in our work-life balance that we talked about. So that we are purpose-driven and have good principle to help us to be very focused and have good TIMES with our work-life balance.

And that's why you see this cartoon here, that the target is important, meaning we need to aim at the right purpose and know where we're going with our time management. So, that's how we're going to avoid running like this mad athlete chasing the time and being the slave to the clock. And not to be blind, we want not to be just busy without a purpose or not to be bored. Let's be the boss of our own time and be the master instead of being the slave. See you next time.

Reflections:

1. Have you read any time management books, and what practical time management methods have you learned from them?

2. Contrasting the reasons for wasting time mentioned by teacher Kong, look for loopholes in your time management and see what time you have not used well every day?