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!

Download the Wallpaper:

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Or, read one of these:

1. Separate Work and Life
2. Reduce Screen Time
3. Know What You Want

Does it sometimes feel like you’re running the rat-race full-tilt and yet you don’t even know why you’re doing it? So many of us don’t know what we want out of life, so we just do what everyone else is doing and what anyone else tells us we should be doing. (And I don’t just mean our bosses or our clients, I mean our culture in general.)

If you don’t know what you are living and working for, you are subject to working for anything and everything. When you live like this every activity has just as significant a demand on you as everything else. There’s no reason not to work late, take on more projects, spend more time doing something you don’t want to do, or be involved in activities you don’t really love.

Until you know what actually do want you can’t start cutting out the things you don’t want.

Its time to reclaim your life, your energy, your time and your thoughts. The first step in achieving a good work/life balance is to figure out what you want from life.

Write it Out

The best way to remember and focus on anything is to write it out. Take some time to dream and brainstorm about what a great life for you looks like. Try to think up 100 things you want to do, be or have. But don’t just think about this stuff – write it down! Making things concrete makes them real and can help you know exactly what you want to move towards. If you are a goal-oriented person, write out some goals whose achievements will carry you closer to what you want from life.

“I Already Know What I Want”

If you have already spent time in the past deciding what you want out of life, good!, you’re a step ahead. But we are often consumed by the overwhelming demands of daily chaos, activities and todos and forget what we’re working towards, what we’re working for. We need reminders to keep us focused on the bigger picture sometimes. Business owners and freelancers are especially susceptible to being overtaken by their work. This is too bad because we are often those who have the most control over being able to make our work fit our life.

If you’re getting caught in the undertow you may need to pause and remember why you are doing what you are doing.

Do This Now:

Take 10 minutes and write down what your Ideal Day would look like. Be as specific as you can starting as you wake up and working through each hour of your day. Remember, this is your ideal day, so dream big. What kind of work would you be doing? With whom? What would your home life look like? What kind of environment would you live in? Now you have something to work towards. Read this Ideal Day monthly or quarterly and start making changes to make every day more like your Ideal Day.

Download the wallpaper:

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Or, read one of these:

1. Find a Non-Work-Related Hobby
2. Guard Your Time
3. Separate Work and Life

It was an easy change that made a pretty great impact.  The new images are peaceful, clean and quiet.  I recommend trying this out on your own computer; here’s a quick tutorial on how to easily create your own stunning desktop.

1. Grab one of your favorite photos that you’ve taken. (Some tips on How to take great photos with your little camera)

2. Crop it to the size of your desktop. (Crop in iPhoto, Picassa, Windows Live Photo Gallery – or do it online!)

3. Turn the image to black & white (iPhoto, Picassa)

4. Up the contrast – this helps the photos pop a little more and keep them from melting away into grey (iPhoto, Picassa)

5. Add it as your desktop background

6. Done!

This technique works with almost any image.  Here are a few before and after pics:

Do you want some of the power of Adobe Photoshop to help with all of this editing?  You can now use some basic Photoshop tools online for free!  Try that out.

If you want some inspiration from some incredible black and white photography check out Nick Brandt.  Then post some links to your new BW desktops, your favorite desktops, or your favorite BW images.

Or, read one of these:

1. Forgiveness Desktop Wallpaper

Forgiveness is the economy of the heart… forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.
- Hannah More

When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.
- Bernard Meltzer

Without forgiveness life is governed by… an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.
- Roberto Assagioli

Here’s a new desktop for you to download and enjoy.

Remember that envy, jealousy and anger often poison our own hearts without bothering the person we’re upset with at all.  This is just as true in business as it is in personal life.  Try downloading the wallpaper and while you wait take a deep breath and forgive someone.

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Check out some other desktops from Apt Design:

And look for an upcoming blog post where I’ll show you how to easily create your own stunning desktops.

Or, read one of these:

1. Creativity Wallpaper
2. Ornamental Wallpaper
3. How to Easily Create Your own Stunning Desktop

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Or, if your tastes tend towards the dark and fiery, there’s this one:

Or, read one of these:

1. Ornamental Wallpaper
2. Forgiveness Desktop Wallpaper

Spending a little time on creativity is almost never bad, and today we’ve spent some time creating (from scratch) this wallpaper for you desktop’s background. Go ahead, download and enjoy! A{readmore}nd don’t say we never gave you anything.

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Or, read one of these:

1. Creativity Wallpaper
2. Forgiveness Desktop Wallpaper
3. How to Easily Create Your own Stunning Desktop