A LexisNexis survey of the top 100 newspapers and magazines around the world shows a dramatic rise in the number of articles on the topic, from 32 in the decade from 1986 to 1996 to a high of 1674 articles in 2007 alone. [The ONE Thing]
The Onion jokingly implies that the only way to achieve effective work/life balance is to not have a job:
That's hysterical — because it's not remotely realistic. So what actually works?
He works Monday to Friday. Saturday is for family and Sunday is for God. Period. No work on the weekends. No exceptions. No matter what.
Clay knows what's important to him, drew a line, and probably doesn't suffer from many work-life balance worries.
Is this effective for everyone at every company? No. But you have to start with knowing what matters most to you and drawing a line.
2) What gets you disproportionate results?
Face it: often you start by doing whatever happens to be in front of you. But proximity does not equal priority.
In his book The ONE Thing, Gary Keller applies the "Pareto principle" to the workday:
Most of us get 80 percent of results from 20 percent of the work we do. So focus on that 20 percent.
What really creates progress vs. treading water? What gives disproportionate results? Do that first and most frequently.
3) What's the thing only *you* can do well?
If someone else can do the laundry at home, let them do it. If someone else can do the filing at work, let them do it.
But if you're the parent, you need to be at the parent-teacher conference and if you're the sales lead you need to be at the sales meeting.
All in all, the effective executive tries to be himself; he does not pretend to be someone else. He looks at his own performance and at his own results and tries to discern a pattern. "What are the things," he asks, "that I seem to be able to do with relative ease, while they come rather hard to other people?" [The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done]
Management guru Pete Drucker says focus on the things that only you can do. Delegate, outsource, or neglect the rest.
4) What's most important right now?
You feel good when you check a lot of things off your to-do list. But were they things that are most important and urgent? That's what matters.
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