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[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the Productivity Genius Podcast. I'm your host Kelly Fifield, and in this episode, we're talking about work-life balance, which honestly seems a little weird to me to talk about because I don't actually even think it's a thing like I think it's something people make up and only feel like they don't have.
Like if you ever had the thought, oh my gosh. I have so much work-life balance right now. I am so in balance. I feel like the only thoughts I've ever had about work-life balance were that I was out of balance. I know for sure it came with emotions like guilt and shame, but I've never been like, oh yeah, I'm crushing this balance thing.
I don't even think if it were a thing that I'd want it, I don't think I want lots of balance in my life. I think I like giving more attention to certain things at certain times. I really don't find it super useful. Now, of course, if you do, there's nothing wrong with that.[00:01:00] There are ways to measure it. I guess.
If you tried, like I guess if you were trying to achieve work-life balance, what would you use to measure at time? For sure, we could put lots of activities on our calendar and show that we were spending the same amount of times on different things. But if you're like me and that isn't really attractive to you, then let's look at what's really going on here, in my opinion.
I feel like most of the time when this topic comes up of work-life balance, for most people it's that work is overtaking. It's like work is taking up too much time, too much attention, and I think that's often when the guilt comes in. Every once in a while. I do see it the other way. I do have lots of clients and friends who have side hustles and they wish they had.
More time for that portion of their work. But I think in general, most of us have issues with this whole idea around not having enough time with the people that we love. So let's actually try to dive into [00:02:00] this and see if we can take care of this for ourselves and do it from a productivity lens, right?
That's my area of expertise. So how can we use productivity to feel like we're getting whatever it is that we think we'll get from having a balanced work-life situation? I actually think the thing that we're trying to achieve or feel is that we are giving our priorities, their proper attention and that we're not dropping the ball anywhere.
So it makes sense that we figure out, well, what are those priorities? And here's a couple ways to figure out what things you want to be giving your attention to.
One way to go about it is to like look at a list online or something like Google values or priorities or something like that. Look at the list and then pick out the ones that kind of speak to you. I personally don't love that one because as I go through lists like that, I wanna highlight like all of 'em, like, oh, family,
sure, that's important. Oh, health, heck yeah. Asleep. Uhhuh, oh and love. Yes. [00:03:00] Okay. And kindness, of course, and all the things, right? So I wanna highlight all of them. They're all priorities. So that method isn't super helpful for me. So if that's not helpful for you, then here's two other ways to figure out what your priorities are.
One way is to think of a time when you were feeling out of balance. What were you telling yourself? For me, the thoughts in the past were things like, I'm not spending enough time with my kids. My house is a mess. I am always working right? So some of my priorities there that I could identify is, okay, time with my kids is important to me.
Organization in my house and in my life is important to me. Limiting my working hours is important to me.
So you could go through experiences where you have felt. Kind of, or identify that you're out of balance and see what things were lacking there. And that's one way to identify your priorities. Another way that I really like is imagining your perfect day or your perfect week. Like what would be going on if you had the most perfect day, like just an average Tuesday, but it was just the best [00:04:00] Tuesday. For me,
my kids would be together and they would be making each other laugh ridiculously hard. I would have time with just Scott and I when I could just laugh with him and connect with him. I would have a plan probably early in the day where I got a few things accomplished towards my goals. I. I would have time to do a little bit of thought work or meditation.
I always feel fantastic and feel pretty cool when I get that done and I would get a lot of sleep. So I guess that list, translates into priorities like my kids' relationship with each other. That's actually super important to Scott and I, my relationship with Scott.
My professional goals, my mental health, and sleep. I think it's kind of funny that sleep gets on there. Doesn't sound as important as the other ones. Although if you ever spent time with me when I was lacking sleep, you would want me to get sleep too 'cause I am a cranky witch.
Now my podcast is all about like productivity and time management, and that can be, and I'm gonna show you how that can be connected to your values and your priorities.
It [00:05:00] doesn't take a lot of time, and you can use your brilliant brain to come up with ways to incorporate your values into your schedule. In fact, I think it's one of the main things you should use when you're planning your schedule. You wanna make sure that you are scheduling time for the things that are most important to you.
Now, like I said, since I'm not all into balancing, I'm not saying as many hours or that the priorities should even define the number of hours. I don't think that an hour spent at work and an hour spent with your family are even equivalent in any measurable way except for the amount of time, but the importance, I don't know, the time piece just doesn't mean a lot to me, but it does mean a lot to me to put.
Time on my calendar to make sure that all of my priorities are getting my attention.
And here's how you can do that for yourself. First, identify your priorities. So either do the whole list thing or use some of the suggestions I have, like the perfect day. What are your priorities? What [00:06:00] things do you wanna make sure you're taking care of? Two brainstorm the different things that you would love to be doing in order to support those values. Just give yourself a blank piece of paper. Set a 10-minute timer and just brain dump all the ideas that you can come up with. You will be amazed at how many creative things you discover.
And finally, step three, pick maybe two of those ideas you came out with and put them on your to-do list for today or tomorrow. None of these things need to take lots of time. Like you could write a nice note and put it on your kid's mirror. You could give your kid an extra hug. You could text your husband. You could meditate for two minutes at work. You could commit to a five-minute stretching break.
You could put a 10-minute super thinking time block on your schedule to come up with ideas for your business.
Intentionally putting little things on your calendar to take care of the most important things to you will make you feel amazing.
Please give it a try.
Okay, next week is going to be super fun. We're gonna look at your story, like what's your [00:07:00] deal? What's the title of your current chapter? Who's authoring your story? What chapters in your story would you love to rewrite?
and we might even add in some sci-fi next time, like, is time travel possible? Do you have to have the plutonium for the Fluxx capacitor from the Libyan terrorist, or could we do it some other way?
But since you don't have a time machine yet, you'll just have to wait until next week. Bye for now.
