Jeff Davidson, The Work-Life Balance Expert® and author of Simpler Living and Breathing Space knows you’re stressed and going in fifty million different directions. He wants you to know you don’t have to be. He recently gave an interview where he addressed questions on how one can find a work-life balance.
Interviewer: People are overworked overwhelmed, stressed out and exhausted. How can we not be?
Jeff: Unfortunately, we can’t escape all of those things, but what we need to tell people is to get their cell phones out of their cars! There are a few other simple things that everybody can do to make their days go better. For example, if you wake up in the morning by alarm clock, you didn’t get enough sleep for the night.
Interviewer: Yes, because if you got enough sleep, you’d get up on your own.
Jeff: True! So what you have to do to adjust is, over the next couple of days, figure out at what time you need to go to bed so that you wake up on your own. When you wake up on your own and not by alarm clock, your whole morning goes better. I also suggest that people put things they’ll need during the next day by their front door the night before. That means much less scrambling in the morning. If you’re not scrambling to get out the door, you have a fighting chance of maintaining some semblance of control during that morning.
When you get in the car, if you can possibly do it, instead of starting on your cell phone and getting into all these discussions, put on some type of relaxing music or do something that is soothing. The longer your commute or the longer your drive, the more you need a soothing environment. You want to pick something that’s soothing to you, because it can be different from one person to the next.
When you arrive at your destination, dropping your kids off at school, or at your desk at work, wherever you may be, you’ve got to fight the reflexive tendency in our society these days to do two things or three things at once. Multitasking — it’s a false time saver. The studies are starting to show up indicating that you don’t do your best on any of the tasks you engage in when you attempt multitasking. So, I suggest people focus on one thing at a time, take it as far as you can, then turn to the next. You actually do your best work, you have peace of mind, and the clock doesn’t seem to be racing.
Interviewer: You have to finish it though, because I’m the type of person where if I do more and I go from thing to thing, I finish everything I start, but I get bored if I stay on the same project for too long.
Jeff: Well you know, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. As a matter of fact, many people gain energy by switching tasks, but it has to be a conscious decision. You decided to work on this for ten minutes and then you’re going to turn to something else. You’re not frittering your time and attention all over the place, out of control. It all depends on whether it’s your choice or not.
Interviewer: Right, for example, if you’re in your office or cubicle and you’re doing five things at once that you didn’t intend to, then you’re stressed out completely.
Jeff: Yes, and even going to lunch or taking a break is not going to be enough of a rest for that kind of environment when you do that over and over again, day after day, multitasking, sending your attention in every direction, operating at a higher speed than your body’s comfortable operating at, there’s just not going to be enough rest for you.
Interviewer: You’ve written a lot of books about saving time and getting things done, how about some false time-saving tips?
Jeff: Many people rely on email, but over-reliance can be a problem. You know the times you end up exchanging 6 or 7 emails, where a one minute call would have solved the whole thing? Another thing, a lot of people, if they have to travel to work, take tons and tons of reading material, thinking they’re going to have time to knock it all out. So, they lug this stuff around from plane to hotel room, and they come back and nine tenths of what they lugged with them hasn’t been read.
Forget this notion that you’re going to read it all. Just take a slim volume or folder, and if you cover what’s in the folder, that’s fine. If not, it didn’t weigh that much!
Interviewer: You say that it doesn’t save time when you don’t make your bed. We get up very early and usually take naps in the afternoon, so I tend to make my bed halfway. Does this count?
Jeff: That’s okay, and the reason why I say make your bed is that in general, we’re talking about a 30-40 second activity. There are a lot of time management books and gurus out there that say “You can save time by not making your bed, because after all you come back home and jump right back in.” But you know what? It’s a false time saver, especially on the weekend because you’re going to walk by your bedroom 6 to 12 times and see that unmade bed and feel like you’re so overwhelmed that you don’t have 30-40 seconds to simply straighten out your bed.
Interviewer: One of your false time saving tips is to pack several days in advance of a trip. I like to pack ahead of time, but that doesn’t save time?
Jeff: There’s nothing wrong with packing days in advance if you have the room and the space. For example, if you’re packing in your bedroom and you happen to have a couch or a large dresser top or someplace where you can lay out the items as you’re proceeding towards your departure, that’s ok. You have a visual system.
However, what most people do too often is they begin packing too early out of their immediate sight, and it might not be so easy to keep track of what you’ve already packed, then you end up double packing and second guessing. It becomes more of an obstacle to get that suitcase finished than you can imagine. You might even need items you’ve already packed. Unless you have doubles of everything, you may have to go trapping through your suitcase and pull out things and use them again.
Interviewer: If there’s one thing that can totally save us time, the biggest piece of advice, what is it?
Jeff: The biggest thing would be to sit and quietly contemplate what you want to accomplish. In other words, don’t just do something, sit there. At least for openers.
Interviewer: So take a deep breath and take it all in?
Jeff: Yes! It could be a small piece of paper and a pen, you don’t need a palm top, or a computer, just sketch out how you want your day to go. What are a couple of big things that you want to accomplish. Give yourself that moment that will make a difference, a huge difference
Jeff Davidson is “The Work-Life Balance Expert®,” has written 59 mainstream books, is a preeminent authority on time management, and is an electrifying professional speaker, making 806 presentations since 1985 to clients such as Kaiser Permanente, IBM, Novo Nordisk, American Express, Lufthansa, Swissotel, Re/Max, USAA, Worthington Steel, and the World Bank. He is the author of “Breathing Space,” and “Simpler Living.” His 60 Second Series with Adams Media, including the 60-Second Organizer, 60-Second Self-Starter, and 60-Second Innovator, are popular titles in China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Poland, Spain, France, and Brazil. Jeff has been widely quoted in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, and USA Today. Cited by Sharing Ideas Magazine as a “Consummate Speaker,” Jeff believes that career professionals today in all industries have a responsibility to achieve their own sense of work-life balance, and he supports that quest through his books, speeches, apps, and audios