Stress

Slow Down

This is Part 5 in the Apt Design 2011 Ebook Series – Creating Work/Life Balance.
Click here to get the book and see the whole series.

You move fast.

Admit it. Much of the time, maybe most of the time, you hit the floor running and don’t get a break till you climb into bed at night. Its a problem so many of us are facing more and more in modern times.

Leo Babauta puts it this way in his book Focus,

We live in curious times. It’s called the Age of Information, but in another light it can be called the Age of Distraction. … never have the distractions been so voluminous, so overwhelming, so intense, so persistent as they are now. … More and more, we are connected, we are up to our necks in the stream of information, we are in the crossfire of the battle for our attention, and we are engaged in a harrying blur of multitasking activity.

But now a reversal has begun. You’ve seen it in plenty of other places before this blog post – a cultural movement to slow down, turn off the noise and live more freely. Here’s a look at some ways to live a better life by slowing down and doing less:

Don’t Do. Just Be.

In our current American culture there is so much emphasis on Getting Things Done. We make todo lists for every part of our life and there are thousands of books and videos telling us how to be more productive. Built into our modern worldview is the idea that we are only worthwhile if we are accomplishing something.

Break that thought habit. You don’t need to be constantly doing. Take some time to stop doing and start being. Relax and be yourself. Think quietly. Reflect. Breathe. Look at the stars. Sip tea by yourself while the sun rises. Pet a sleeping animal. Just sit and be.

Kill the Need to Know Instantly

In the past it took awhile to hear about things that had happened. You may not read about events until days, weeks or even months later. As our technology has advanced the time it takes for us to find out about things has significantly decreased until now there are an endless amount of ways for you to know what’s going on as it happens.

People used to survive without that instant knowledge. You still can.

You don’t need to know everything that happens the second that it happens. Try turning off whatever it is that’s constantly bombarding you with the immediate and the now and the urgent. The less you are being invaded with what is happening elsewhere the more you can focus on what is happening where you are. The point is not to see how long you can go without the stream of information, but to kill the need to know everything instantly.

Urgent is Poison

This need for doing things immediately is often worst in your job. You see it stamped across papers and blaring its little “!!!” at you in your inbox. Its called Urgent. And its poison. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson from 37Signals put it this way in their book Rework:

Most things just don’t warrant that kind of hysteria. If a task doesn’t get done this very instant, nobody is going to die. Nobody’s going to lose their job. It won’t cost the company a ton of money. What it will do is create artificial stress, which leads to burnout and worse.

Relax a little. Slow things down. Enjoy being without doing.

Do This Now:

Try this. Find 5 full minutes to lay on the floor quietly and do nothing but breath and clear your mind of thoughts. 5 full minutes. I think you’ll find 2 things: 1. It will be harder than you think and 2. Afterwards you will feel even better than you would have thought.

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04/26/11 Comments (2) focus, leo babauta, productivity, rework, stress, time management, twitter, urgent, work-life balance

Separate Work and Life

This is Part 4 in the Apt Design 2011 Ebook Series – Creating Work/Life Balance.
Click here to get the book and see the whole series.

Putting in 12-hour days. Constantly being stressed about work. Not being able to sleep because you’re thinking about your job. Not spending quality time with your loved ones because you’re always at the office…

No one wants to live like this. Working non-stop is not a life anyone aspires to. The problem is that kind of life can be an easy trap to fall into if you don’t have clear boundaries between your work and the rest of your life.

separate work & life When you separate work and life and focus on them individually you get better focus, attention and results in each. Not only that, but people deserve a separation between you work and your life.

Customers & Clients

Your clients/customers/employer are paying you for your time, and they deserve to get what they pay for. If you are constantly letting yourself be distracted from your job by making dinner, chatting with friends, or working on your kids Halloween costume you are doing your clients/customers/employer a disservice. Actually, you’re cheating them of what they rightfully paid for.

Clients deserve to have your full attention on their project while you’re on the clock. If you work from home it helps to have a separate, specific space for work. When you’re there you’re at work and shouldn’t be disturbed. But its the same wherever you work. While you are getting paid focus on giving value to the people paying you.

Family

focus on the family Your family and friends deserve for you to pay attention to them while you are with them too. Continuing to work (so easy to do now with smart phones, laptops and tablets) even while physically present doesn’t fly. It devalues the relationships of the people you’re with. When you’re with your family they deserve all of your thoughts and attention. This is a lesson Henry learned the hard way when his daughter essentially called him “Daddy Who Seems To Be Here But Actually Isn’t”.

Likewise, even being mentally distracted by work can really hinder your experience of life. Practice being present in relationships (your spouse will thank you), conversations and even menial activities. Zone in on who you’re with and what you’re doing.

You

Know who else it helps when you separate work and life? You.

You deserve to not be working all the time, you deserve to have a life too. If you constantly have work thoughts fluttering in the back of your head while living the rest of your life – doing activities you enjoy – you are robbing those experiences of their full richness. Even if you love your job, be more than your job! Be a fuller, richer person who doesn’t always have to be thinking about one thing. Take a break, get away, relax! You can’t fully do that if you’re work-brain is always on.

Do This Now:

Tonight, spend an entire evening with your family. No work calls, emails, tweets – nothing related to your job. If you need to, schedule it with your boss or your clients – let them know you’ll be unavailable. Completely focus on your family, your friends and yourself.

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04/19/11 Comments (0) clients, family, stress, time, time management, vacation, work, work-life balance

Guard Your Time

This is Part 2 in the Apt Design 2011 Ebook Series – Creating Work/Life Balance.
Click here to get the book and see the whole series.

Now that you know what you want in life and you’ve set your priorities based on that, its time to start making changes that will get you to that life. As I mentioned in my last post, one of your greatest resources is your time. More often than not its a resource that we too easily let slip away and then wonder where it went.

Numerous distractions, “important” projects and mindless activities can quietly suck away our time, time that we could be using to create the work-life balance we want. Focus on removing these little things that are stealing your time and you’ll have more to spend where you want – on things that help you reach your goals and priorities in life. Guard your time, protect, and value it as the resource it truly is.

Look at where your time is going

The first step to good time management is to realize where you are currently spending your time. You probably don’t realize the amount of time that you’re spending on certain things – it may be water-cooler talk at the office, constantly checking your farm on Farmville, or even just mindlessly basking in the glow of your TV every night.

There are a variety of ways to actually see where you spend your time. When you are on your computer (a place where we all waste massive amounts of our day) you can use a time-tracker like RescueTime, which can also block distractions to help you focus on your current task. But if you are really struggling with needing more time I would recommend tracking where you spend all your time every day. At the end of every hour record what you’ve been doing for that hour. There are a plethora of generic time-tracker apps out there, pick one that works best for you – or just use a pencil and paper! Is this a boring and anal-retentive exercise? You bet. But I guarantee at the end of the week you’ll be surprised to see where all your time went!

Learn to Say No

After you’ve seen where you’re spending your time the next step in guarding your time is learning to say “No” to the things you don’t want to spend your time on. A lot of time is wasted at work in inefficient things like pointless meetings, and you may need to talk to your boss about this. Timothy Ferriss has some great points about saying No at the office in chapter 7 of his controversial book, The 4-Hour Work Week.

Learning to say no may involve you choosing to discipline yourself enough to turn off a video game and go exercise. It could even involve you saying no to activities you enjoy or organizations whose goals you agree with. But if you are drowning in commitments you need to review your priorities and not say yes to everything. Leo at ZenHabits offers some practical help on how to say No.

The choice is always yours. Learn to say No.

Set boundaries

Too often the reason we say Yes to too many things is because we think we can do more than we can. And we all know the feeling of stretching ourselves too thin. The first step in not doing this is to know your limits. I wrote about this important concept (and how marathoner Ryan Hall used it) in my post at Graphic Design Blender: Creating a Healthy Work-Life Balance as a Freelance Designer. The idea is simple in theory but can be hard to implement – know your limits on how much time you can give to other people and activities, give yourself some padding, and then set your boundaries there and don’t let anything else in.

Overall guarding your time is an integral part of creating work/life balance. The better you get at it the more you choose how your life will be balanced.

Do This Now:

Right now look at your least important, most disliked, or biggest time commitment and drop it. Call or email those that need to know right now and tell them you’re done. There you go! A quick, bloodless step to getting more time to create the work/life balance you want!

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04/12/11 Comments (0) boundaries, desktop, no, stress, time, time management, wallpaper, work-life balance

The 2011 Apt Design Ebook – Creating Work/Life Balance

Creating a healthy work/life balance is something I’m very passionate about – both for myself and for other people (I’ve written about it here and here). Today hundreds of thousands of employees across the world are feeling constantly overworked and stressed about their jobs. At the same time many feel like they don’t have the time and energy to really live the life they want. And its no better for most business-owners, they are usually more stressed than their employees by the constant demands their business puts on them.

This year’s Apt Design Ebook and its accompanying blog series are for anyone feeling like their work and life are out of balance. The series will help you realize what’s important in your life and teach you how to go about reclaiming time and energy for your priorities. You’ll learn how to turn off work so you can spend time living. This is not a tirade against your work or your job – its a call to put things back in balance and stop letting work run your life.

The Ebooks

Last year Apt Design started a tradition of creating a small, well-designed ebook.Last year’s ebook was full of helpful tips and advice from around the internet and was first released just to clients.

This year’s ebook takes a different approach. First of all its available for everyone right from the get go. Here it is. Next, it is full of original content from me – tips and advice on creating a great work/life balance. Thirdly, I felt passionate enough about the ideas from the book that I am writing a series of blog posts about creating work/life balance which will be published here on my blog for the next 9 weeks.

So, go ahead and grab a copy of the ebook and then read these posts which flesh out each idea:

Lastly I am also offering this content as a presentation. I recently gave this talk to a group of fellow freelancers on a retreat in Sayulita, Mexico and would love to give the presentation to a group for you as well. Contact me to make arrangements.

03/23/11 Comments (5) business, ebook, exercise, free ebook, priorities, stress, work-life balance, working from home

Overtime Guest Blog on Zen Family Habits

Zenhabits.net is one of my favorite blogs, and its sister site zenfamilyhabits.net is a great resource for healthy, positive, simple, loving families. Today I have a guest post published on zenfamilyhabits.net entitled How to Make Overtime Work for You.
zenfamilyhabits guest post
Most of us will experience working overtime at some point in our lives. My post shows you how setting the right boundaries, creating the right environment, and having the right attitude can keep overtime from having a negative impact on you and your families life.

Please head on over to zenfamilyhabits.net to read the entire post!

03/23/11 Comments (0) guest post, overtime, stress, work-life balance, zen family habits, zen habits

Finding Your Place of Refuge

Note: This is a guest post from Tyler Fitzgerald, a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army, currently training at England’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

I love my job. I haven’t met many people who enjoy their job as much as I do on a day-to-day basis (except for my brother Brad, of course). Nonetheless, there are still times during the day that I need to get away. I’m sure you do too. Whether it’s too much on your plate at a time, tough deadlines, terrible coworkers, or some specific frustration with your profession, there is bound to be sometime you need to release some steam. Instead of ranting at your coworkers, try going to your place of refuge.

Whatever you want to call it – quiet place, place of solace, get away – make sure you have one. Maybe it’s a certain song with the headphones on and your eyes closed. Maybe it’s hiding in a broom cupboard and taking three deep breaths. Maybe it’s reading your favorite selection of the Good Book. Just make sure your refuge can be accessible almost anytime during the day, and easily reached when you need it. Consistency is key to making your refuge work, so get into a routine of going there. Your place may or may not be a physical location, but you should be somewhat isolated.

I’ll even let you in on my secret place of refuge when I’m on field exercises: in my sleeping bag zipped up all the way with my balaclava rolled up around my ears. The crux of my refuge is that balaclava. I pretend that when I have it on nobody can wake me up mid-slumber to give me a menial task to perform. I immediately relax when I put on that balaclava and forget the current stresses. And getting away from current stresses, even for a moment, is the point of your place of refuge.

The potential importance this has on your daily work routine is enormous. The main way to take advantage of your refuge is to use it as a form of escapism. Don’t waste your refuge time worrying about your current dramas or even trying to brainstorm solutions to a problem, just go there and relax. Even simply knowing that your place of refuge exists can relieve lots of stress.

Most importantly, as with everything else, make it fun!

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04/09/10 Comments (0) army, job, music, refuge, relax, stress