photo credit: Jodiepedia

It can be awfully tempting to use your weekend to catch up on what didn’t get done this week, or what perenially never gets done. I know: I do it all the time.

But downtime gives us perspective, lets us recover physically and mentally, and allows us to perform better. So here’s a thought: as you go about your Friday, look for simple ways to tie up loose ends a bit tighter than usual so that you can use your weekend to recharge. Maybe it’s as simple as tidying your desk before you leave. I promise you, you’ll come back fresher on Monday for it.

Have a great Friday, and a very relaxing weekend.

photo credit: Lars Plougmann

It’s a common understanding of how to run a company that you must be market-driven, and be responsive to customer feedback. And as a customer advocate, I would certainly never be one to deny that customer input and market validation are important. But the other side of that coin is that you’re in business not only to make money, but to develop yourself, enjoy the rewards of a job well done, and hopefully leave this world having enjoyed yourself and given enjoyment to others.

To fully live that ideal might mean turning some work down. It might mean making tough decisions about when to leave your current job and start your own company. It might mean passing on certain investors who don’t share your views on how business should be conducted.

But in order to make those tough decisions, you have to really know yourself and your values. Not just personally, although that of course is important too, but as a company. What does your company stand for?

I recently ran across an article at Both Sides of the Table that dealt with this very idea on the way to becoming a more customer-centric organization:

So I started thinking about the ‘Inside Out’ organization. This is the company that lets outsiders have a glimpse of what is going on in the sausage factory. Being transparent about our workload, our struggles, our fund raising, whatever. Letting our customers and the market know that we were a real organization with real people rather than a pre-packaged, pre-processed marketing machine.

It may be scary, but there’s a lot to be said for letting your insides show. You may end up attracting more appropriate customers in the long run.

photo credit: Valerie Everett

It’s about as cliche a desk accessory as it gets, but a framed photo on your desk of something that inspires you may be just the thing you need to keep you focused and driven to succeed.

A few jobs back, I was overextended, managing three of the company’s top five goals within my small team, but it seemed worth it because I believed something good would come of it in the end, both for the company and for me professionally. But to try to make it all work, I was putting in really long hours at the office. Which meant that the very reasons why I wanted to succeed — to enjoy my life with my husband at our beautiful home in relative comfort — were out of my reach when I needed the motivation the most.

So I spent a couple bucks on having good quality prints made of some of my favorite snapshots of my husband and my home, and put them in good frames. Sure, I could have just made those images my computer screensavers or desktop wallpapers, but then I wouldn’t have them there in my peripheral vision all the time, just waiting to remind me about why I was there in the first place. Which also reminded me, after I’d put in a long day’s work, to go home and enjoy what I was working for.

Now that I work from home, I don’t need the reminder in such a visual way, but I do occasionally take a break from my desk to go hug my husband or take a stroll through our garden.

Maybe your inspiration is different: maybe yours has to do with places you want to go, or things you want to do. Maybe mementos of the past keep you focused on the present. Whatever it is that keeps you going, find a way to remind yourself frequently.

How do you remind yourself what really matters? Share your tips in the comments.

photo credit: chanchan222

Regardless of what you think of football or Brett Favre, you’ve seen the same song and dance happen in different sectors. You’ve seen the CEO who hops from one large company to the next, even after his judgment and ingenuity have left him. You’ve seen the teacher who needs to retire instead of hang on one more year. You’ve seen the designer who no longer has a knack for creating compelling book covers.

But none of them can let go. Financial needs aside, some people can’t walk into the sunset peacefully, knowing when to call it quits and to move on.

I’m sure there’s a little bit of Brett Favre in most of us. Something is telling us to move on, but we just can’t do it.

I’m reminded of a stellar article written by Dr. Jeff Cornwall, Director for the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University. He challenges the entrepreneur (and the non-entrepreneur, too) to not “become the noun of what you do for a living.”

He continues:

One of the risks of using nouns to describe what we do in our work is that it can reinforce the tendency we all have to get carried away with our work. I loved starting a growing businesses (most of the time, at least). I love teaching and writing. It is indeed a blessing to love what one does for a living and enjoy the hard work that goes along with it. But, with every virtue there is a vice looming in the background. Although hard work is a good thing, it can be taken to excess and become a vice if it keeps us from all the other things we should be doing with our lives.

Go read the rest of the article and come back here and tell us how you resist becoming the noun of what you do for a living. How do you keep things in check and know when it’s time to exit gracefully?

photo credit: MeaganJean

The weekend is here at last! Time to take it easy, put your feet up, maybe do some yard work, and hang out with friends. Or is it?

For many busy professionals (perhaps you!), the weekends are often overtaken with catch-up tasks from the previous week, and in perhaps fewer cases, planning for the week ahead.

We all know we need a break, but the specter of possible layoffs, the increased workload from laid-off coworkers, and the crazy-fast-paced workplaces many of us are in means more and more to do, and a great deal of anxiety about how to get it done.

May we make a suggestion? It isn’t rocket science or anything, but sometimes we need the truth pointed out to us before we can recognize it. You will probably encounter distractions, you won’t get it all done, and you will probably close out the weekend feeling disappointed that you didn’t get to relax more. Instead, why not take the Weekend Idealist approach to Getting Relaxation Done:

1. Decide the two work-related things (no more than that!) that you could do in under an hour this weekend that would make you feel more caught up and allow you to feel less anxious.
2. Pick the best time to do them: if your focus is better in the mornings, get them over with right away.
3. Get them done! Don’t let them turn into an ordeal. Just power through them and knock them out.
   
4. Permit yourself the blissful freedom to do whatever you want with the rest of your weekend.

See? It’s so easy, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing it this way all along.

We hope you’ll be able to find balance this weekend. We’re all for productivity and achievement, but everyone needs to unwind now and then.

Got a process for balancing your productive time with your relaxing time on the weekends? Share it in the comments.

And have a great weekend!

photo credit: James Jordan

We talk a lot here about work-life balance, but what about other kinds of balance? There are a lot of ways within the workplace that you can skew too far one way and lose sight of something else.

For example, it’s easy to get stuck on one side of either process or improvisation, when both have their merits. Process improvement is important to the maturity of any organization, but being quick to see and try novel solutions to problems is key to learning.

Or how about between creativity and discipline? When I worked as a technical copywriter, there were often stretches of time when I felt I needed to distract myself so I could let my mind wander and approach my work fresh when I returned to it. I used to have a sign above my desk that said “A writer is writing even when staring into space.” But it would have been all too easy to let that approach become a trap by convincing myself the distraction was needed when perhaps the discipline of the “sit butt in chair and write” approach would have at times be more helpful. I’m sure there were times I let myself off the discipline hook a little too easily, and other times when I could have used more of a break for the sake of better creativity.

What balance do you struggle to keep, and what steps do you take to ensure you keep that balance? Tell us in the comments. And have a wonderful, balanced week!

photo credit: Mooganic

Working from home, or remotely at all, seems to be an on-again, off-again trend in business blogging. The disadvantages are often cited, such as the chance you’ll be “out of sight, out of mind” and possibly passed over for promotion or lumped in with layoffs even if you are contributing a great deal of value.

But the merits are many, from work-life balance benefits to cost savings to increased productivity.

On the surface, it seems like a risk worth weighing. The question for you is, are you one of the many who work remote work into your routine? How often do you work from home? What techniques do you use to minimize the risks of being overlooked? Share your tips in the comments.

photo credit: the_vampire_hanna

When we feel out of balance, it’s usually because we can’t keep things straight – our priorities, our calendar, our free time. So, what are we to do if we’re really trying our best to keep work and life balanced?

There’s no shortage of systems and methods out there for planning, prioritizing and predicting. Here’s a quick list (although admittedly not comprehensive) of some methods that may help:

• Getting Things Done – The gold standard in workflow and information management. Many folks swear by David Allen’s system.
• Old-fashioned pad and pen – Whether it’s a Moleskine or a steno pad, many people still like to write down what needs doing and scratch it off when it’s done.
• Day Grid Balancer – A simple checklist that allows for prioritization, this free download sample can help you set priorities.
• Assorted to do lists – Whether you use your inbox to manage tasks or an iPhone app that helps you remember what needs doing, handy add ons and services like Remember the Milk can keep things straight for you.

What do you use to keep things straight? In a world where so much needs doing and it can be so easy to get bogged down by both the mundane and the ultimate, share with us how you keep up with it all.

photo credit: dpadua

A few days ago, I was chatting with a friend over dinner about productivity methodologies. We talked about Getting Things Done, Franklin Covey, and a handful of other approaches and schools of thought. One that I mentioned, and which started an interesting side discussion, was a system called Life Balance.

For a while, I used the Life Balance software zealously, because it asks you to assess your “big rocks” type of life goals and focus areas, and then apply continuous balancing, as aided by the software, between the actions that help you progress in those areas. As someone who juggles quite a few avocations (blogging, obviously, and songwriting, just to name a few) in addition to my professional career and personal life, this made a lot of sense to me.

Unfortunately, as I told my friend, I found myself gaming the system. When the software dutifully reminded me that it had been three days since I last checked off “Spend time writing a song,” I knew I had other things I needed to get done first, and would raise the priority of other tasks to compete with songwriting, or whatever else was at the top of the list. My reaction to what the software showed me about my own prioritization and follow-through was that I was hopelessly out of balance and a victim of my own overcommitment.

And possibly that was true. But what my friend and I agreed was that priorities are often in flux, and being “out of balance” for a relatively short period of time to accomplish major goals can still be in balance, in the greater scheme of life goals. So when you’re, say, starting up a business and you regularly sacrifice evening and weekend leisure to ensure your new venture’s success, you could argue that what you’re really doing is prioritizing the leisure in your future ahead of the leisure in your present. And all in all, perhaps there’s still a kind of life balance in that.

(For the record, some time ago, I switched to using Remember the Milk for all my task organization, which with its highly customizable tagging and smart lists, allows me to be a little more fickle about the particular organization methodology I employ at any given time. I’m also a huge fan of Evernote for all my note taking and mental organization needs. Yes, I’m kind of a productivity tools geek.)

What time management approach do you use? How have you dealt with imbalances in your life? Tell us in the comments.

photo credit: DerrickT

Many people think that work/life balance is all about what appears on either side of the vs. in any given scenario. For example:

• Then vs. Now
• Work vs. Life
• Passion vs. Profession

Or better yet:

• Doing what I have to do vs. Doing what I want to do
• Making money vs. Having fun
• Playing it safe vs. Living your dreams

Of course, all of the above matchups are limiting, and even unfair. But that’s the point. Neither work nor life always have to come down to a 1 vs. 2 choice. It doesn’t have to be Either vs. Or. Believe it or not, it can be This AND That. Work AND Life. Passion AND Profession.

And maybe that’s the center around which work/life balance rotates. It’s finding that sweet spot where what we want to do and what we have to do collide. It’s finding the gooey center of happiness in the middle of the Tootie Roll Pop we call life.

So, don’t merely try to justify your 8-hour workday. Find an 8-hour workday that makes you happy, proud, and fulfilled. Don’t buy into the modern mantra that it can only be one or the other. Don’t defer life – live a whole one.

To get a better glimpse into what I mean by that, spend time this weekend with The Monk and the Riddle. This quick read is a quasi-fictional account of a Web-based entrepreneur who thinks he needs to strike it rich with a business plan he’s not very crazy about in order to live the life he’s always wanted. After several conversations with a Silicon Valley veteran, he finally realizes that work is about more than a paycheck, and that value is measured in more places than on a balance sheet.

An excerpt:

Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset – time – to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of your life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, what the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say you’ve been doing what you truly care about today? What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do it right now?

Whether you read a book this weekend, or whether you finally break free from the versus mentality, understand that balancing between work and life might be as simple as re-understanding the meaning of the word life.