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Here it is, halfway through my series on Work Life IMBalance, and I\u2019ve pretty much proven that I\u2019m really good at sitting on the \u201clife\u201d side of the teeter-totter, with an occasional shift to the work side. As I was thinking about this post, I\u2019m trying to decide if this means I\u2019m no good at balance, or an expert at imbalance. I\u2019m kind of leaning towards the latter.<\/p>\n
I would love to say that I\u2019m going to be switching the focus to the work side for a while, but I\u2019ve got two more weeks where I\u2019m going to be in the life category pretty solidly. Right now, I\u2019m on the first of three flights that began in Bangor, ME. I will fly to Detroit, then to Atlanta, then finally to Wichita, KS. From there I\u2019ll have an hour drive home (assuming somebody from the household picks me up). Tomorrow I\u2019ll unpack, do laundry, and begin the process of packing for a six hour drive to Ft. Leonard Wood in the middle of Missouri. Several family members are headed that way to see my oldest son graduate from Army Basic Training. The way the Army structures things, we\u2019ll be able to see him for the first time in 10 weeks for a couple of hours on Wednesday and then for a few more hours on Thursday. On Friday he\u2019ll ship out for his Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Ft. Sam Houston. Honestly, we don\u2019t know how much we\u2019ll be able to communicate with him while at AIT. During Basic training, he was limited to two phone calls during the entire 10 weeks, and letters were sporadically delivered to him. I did a pretty good job of writing to him four to six times a week, and he did a great job writing back (considering his limited time available).<\/span><\/p>\n During the laundry and packing I\u2019m going to try and catch up on the mail that\u2019s arrived at home over the last week while I was gone as well as address any issues with the project proposals that I completed. As of this morning, I haven\u2019t heard back on any of them. Frankly I was hoping to work on them while I was at the airports or on the planes, but I need the client feedback first.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the prior six weeks, I\u2019ve written about the conscious decisions that I\u2019ve been making. It\u2019s been an interesting exercise to really seriously consider every work vs. life decision and take the time to make those decisions. I\u2019ve also written about how I\u2019m recording the deferred decisions for later action.<\/span><\/p>\n For the last two days, I was able to spend a lot more time working on the deferred work decisions. You may have noticed that I finally caught up on the blog posts, since I was three posts behind. I had worked on each post some, but hadn\u2019t completed any of them. Since I was supposed to be posting every week, it was frustrating to me when I realized how far behind I\u2019d gotten.<\/span><\/p>\n So with a pretty hefty helping of resolve, I attacked a lot of the deferred tasks and got quite a bit done. My daughter had Cross Country meetings much of the day yesterday, and I used that time to focus on the tasks that needed to be addressed. It was pretty motivating to have a list already available of the things that needed done, and in many cases, I was able to complete the entire task and check it off the list. I\u2019m enamored of putting things on lists, but I\u2019m even more motivated when I get to check things off the lists. Yesterday I got a lot of \u201cwork\u201d stuff done, and I also accomplished a number of tasks that had been hanging around for quite a while. By the end of the day I was pretty pumped.<\/span><\/p>\n Today my initial flight was delayed 45 minutes, and while that was frustrating, the easy accessibility to power and free WIFI at that Bangor Airport turned into an opportunity to get even more work done. I decided to focus on all \u201cwork\u201d things. Since I\u2019d arrived early for my flight, I got in nearly two hours before boarding the plane.<\/span><\/p>\n And that leads me to this week\u2019s discovery about Work Life IMBalance. In my mind, lots of the tasks that I have to do take large chunks of time. I often procrastinate starting something because I\u2019ve reasoned that \u201cI don\u2019t have enough time\u201d. Over the past few weeks, I\u2019ve discovered that I need to break my tasks down into smaller chunks that take less time. I\u2019ve been focusing on that for three weeks now, and it\u2019s amazing how much more willing I\u2019ve been to start things, anticipating that I can accomplish them.<\/span><\/p>\n A great example is this post. The flight from Bangor to Detroit was scheduled for just under two hours. By the time we took off, got clearance to use electronic devices, and went through the delivery and retrieval of soft drinks (Pop or Soda\u2026which is it in your part of the country?), there was under an hour left to the flight.<\/span><\/p>\n Normally I would just pull out my iPad and continue reading whatever book I\u2019m reading. But I had decided to read up until the retrieval of trash after the drinks, so I\u2019d gotten in some reading. I looked at my Evernote and Wunderlist (the two ways I\u2019m keeping track of tasks) and noted that I needed to work on this blog post. Boom, 45 minutes of thinking and writing in the plane. I jumped at the opportunity, In the past, I\u2019m not sure I would\u2019ve made this time as effective. Yet, by having the task already outlined to do, all I had to do was decided to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n And that\u2019s the other big discovery. Having the tasks broken up into small pieces is great, but nothing is going to get done unless I can let go of the \u201cnot enough time\u201d idea. So I\u2019m working on trying to make use of the scraps and bits of time that are available. I\u2019ve decided that partially completing a task is better than a complete deferral. It\u2019s much better than just procrastinating everything and ending up in a funk over all the things that need to be done and not enough time to do them.<\/span><\/p>\n For the remainder of this week, I\u2019m going to focus on working in small increments, on bite-sized tasks, that I\u2019ve already outlined. That means that I will need to continue to record tasks as they appear, and especially record them when I consciously choose to do something else. The deferral will still occur, but if I can manage to record those outstanding items that need to be done, I\u2019ll be way ahead of the game.<\/span><\/p>\n What methods have you found useful to help stay on your productivity track?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here it is, halfway through my series on Work Life IMBalance, and I\u2019ve pretty much proven that I\u2019m really good at sitting on the \u201clife\u201d side of the teeter-totter, with an occasional shift to the work side. As I was thinking about this post, I\u2019m trying to decide if this means I\u2019m no good at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[29,43,50,89,90],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-productivity","tag-family","tag-home-office","tag-kids","tag-work","tag-work-life-imbalance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n