No one ever starts a business to have less time, less money and more stress. So pause for a moment and consider the age-old question: Do you work to live, or live to work?
For most of us, if we are lucky, work is satisfying and rewarding, but it’s also the ticket to enjoying the good things in life. What is the point, then, of working on into the evening?
It’s usually counterproductive – it takes you longer to do things, the quality isn’t as high, and you tend to compromise family or personal time. Something’s got to give, and it really shouldn’t be your family.
As I’ve written about before, with the right systems in place, you can feel complete at the end of each day, so there’s nothing that can’t wait for the next day. You’re working smarter, not harder, and you are on top of everything.
So, turn everything off at 6 pm. Including yourself.
Sleep, the fixer
Sleep is vital for memory retention. Research shows that, during sleep, the brain is ten times more active in clearing out waste products than when you are awake. It also processes thoughts and memories.
Basically, while we sleep, our brain is busy tidying up, rewiring neurons, and rationalising thoughts.
This helps explain why a) work that seemed okay yesterday may seem less impressive in the morning, and b) solutions to yesterday’s problems seem to fall magically into place after a proper night’s sleep.
By the same token, lack of sleep is damaging: when you stay up late trying to complete a task, you’re denying the brain its vital recuperation time. In the morning, you’re groggy and bad-tempered, and your brain hasn’t had a chance to process those thoughts and memories.
You’ve shot yourself in the foot – and if you keep this up, you’re heading for stress and burnout.
Instead, plan to complete a task at least a day in advance of its deadline, in order to give yourself a night to sleep on it. After all, if it’s good enough for Bill Gates, who likes seven hours’ shut-eye every night, or Jennifer Lopez (eight), or the Dalai Lama (nine) . . .
Tips for turning in on time
Adjusting your work–life balance means injecting discipline into your daily routine. To help make this less daunting, here’s a few tips.
• Keep a log for a week, honestly noting down what you’ve worked on, for how many hours. Then analyse your working routine. Can you see a pattern, or is it chaos? Are you constantly switching tasks whenever you’re interrupted by emails from clients and colleagues? At what times of the day are you the most focused, doing your best work?
• Going on from the above, use your work log to plan each day’s agenda: for example, you might like to give the first hour over to dealing with email, then go to ‘stealth mode’ (with your alerts turned off) to achieve a few hours’ solid work on the day’s biggest task, then take your coffee break, and so on. In my eBook Convert Time into Results, I recommend people answer emails just three times a day – this keeps them from being constantly dragged sideways onto distractions.
• Save the last half-hour of each workday for reviewing what you have or have not achieved, and for planning tomorrow’s to-do list. It will help you ‘sign off’ for the day, ready to hit the ground running in the morning.
• If you work from home – as more of us are now doing – try to keep clear physical boundaries between your office space and the rest of the house. Not only will it remove distractions during working hours, you can also physically turn your back on work – best of all, locking the office door – at the day’s end.
• Bring exercise into your daily routine. If you’re an early riser, a dawn walk /yoga/weights session oxygenates the brain, firing up the prefrontal cortex and sharpening decision-making. This sets you up for work, freeing the evening for family time. Or plan exercise into the evenings to help you unwind.
• Turn off your phone and computer at 6 p.m.
My clients find that the 6 pm cut-off makes them more productive through the day, as they have a time limit to get their tasks done, and can look forward to a long and recharging evening.
If you need help switching off at 6pm, get in touch, we can help.
