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managing work life balance
I have been one of the worst affected with work life imbalance for several years and have finally managed to perfect the science (or art) of finishing work and still having time to reflect or to have a heart to heart chat with an office colleague and also manage to catch up with family commitments, regular swimming and exercise routines.
Some of my tips are summarized as bullets below. I have tried my best to put more specifics than general statements, so that these tips are actionable and do not sound like motherhood statements.
These tips are targeted towards middle and senior management category people and the terminology is likely to be more prevalent of the "service" sector.
- Do not encourage out of business hours meeting with your peers or subordinates as a rule, unless it is a customer/service affecting issue. You never gain any reputation of a hard worker like this.
- When your boss calls you after office hours, donot forget to remind him/her about your personal commitment that will be failed.
- Call short & successive meetings rather than full day workshops and try to cover a wide variety of subjects in a day.
- Have gaps between meetings to catch up on emails.
- Circulate bulleted minutes of meeting and follow them up after a week, circulating pending issues and status on each of them
- Send individual mails rather than bulk mails if you need action
- Delegate , delegate, delegate
- Control - zoom in and zoom out of issues with equal ease & rapidity. Donot get stuck at 30,000 feet or at 1foot.
- Work hard to manage expectations. The worst enemy of work life balance is setting expectations that you cannot fulfill.
- Keep your word. Always. This is the secret of managing expectations successfully.
- Throw away all paper - unless it is a legal document. In today's world everything is found online. Or archived emails.
- Keep your table clean with minimum clutter.
- Create your day's calendar in the morning and stick to it.
- Close meetings on time even if you have not finished the agenda.
- Do not hold unscheduled meetings and do not expect others to join in your unscheduled meetings - unless there is a crisis affecting either security of employees or jeopardy of a customer service.
- Every morning go through your sent emails (or flagged emails) of previous day and see where a reminder is needed. A reminder sent first thing in the morning is the most effective.
- Emails should be short and polite. A long email is seldom read.
These are my tricks.
Please feel free to add your own tips & tricks and then let us create a final list that can be polished & published in corporate journals.
regards
Sanjay
Some of my tips are summarized as bullets below. I have tried my best to put more specifics than general statements, so that these tips are actionable and do not sound like motherhood statements.
These tips are targeted towards middle and senior management category people and the terminology is likely to be more prevalent of the "service" sector.
- Do not encourage out of business hours meeting with your peers or subordinates as a rule, unless it is a customer/service affecting issue. You never gain any reputation of a hard worker like this.
- When your boss calls you after office hours, donot forget to remind him/her about your personal commitment that will be failed.
- Call short & successive meetings rather than full day workshops and try to cover a wide variety of subjects in a day.
- Have gaps between meetings to catch up on emails.
- Circulate bulleted minutes of meeting and follow them up after a week, circulating pending issues and status on each of them
- Send individual mails rather than bulk mails if you need action
- Delegate , delegate, delegate
- Control - zoom in and zoom out of issues with equal ease & rapidity. Donot get stuck at 30,000 feet or at 1foot.
- Work hard to manage expectations. The worst enemy of work life balance is setting expectations that you cannot fulfill.
- Keep your word. Always. This is the secret of managing expectations successfully.
- Throw away all paper - unless it is a legal document. In today's world everything is found online. Or archived emails.
- Keep your table clean with minimum clutter.
- Create your day's calendar in the morning and stick to it.
- Close meetings on time even if you have not finished the agenda.
- Do not hold unscheduled meetings and do not expect others to join in your unscheduled meetings - unless there is a crisis affecting either security of employees or jeopardy of a customer service.
- Every morning go through your sent emails (or flagged emails) of previous day and see where a reminder is needed. A reminder sent first thing in the morning is the most effective.
- Emails should be short and polite. A long email is seldom read.
These are my tricks.
Please feel free to add your own tips & tricks and then let us create a final list that can be polished & published in corporate journals.
regards
Sanjay
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