How to Manage Your Work-Life Balance and Reduce Stress

Monday, September 19, 2011
How to Manage Your Work-Life Balance and Reduce Stress

Work-life balance is a problem for many people. Not just freelancers, either—anyone who works in a job that involves some kind of thinking is tempted to take work home with them. I suppose that maintaining a good balance is one of the benefits to menial shift work.
But freelancers have it worst. Without an employer, our income is more dependent on performance than any corporate employee’s income. And for the vast majority of us, there’s no real distinction between our home life and our work life, because our work life happens at home.
Here’s the thing that we lose sight of: becoming a workaholic does not improve your bottom-line or productivity.
When you work every day, all day, with no time set aside for living life, you just get more stressed. You lose sight of reality. You get out of touch with creativity, which is just as important for producing quality work as it is for innovating in business. You take much longer to do things and you get so exhausted that you sit there looking at the screen for hours.
There are no benefits to living a workaholic lifestyle. Let me emphasize that:
No benefits.
I have struggled with this problem for years. I’ve since solved it and struck a balance I’m happy with, but it plagued my family life and my stress levels for much longer than I’m proud to admit.
As you probably know from experience, it can be a hard problem to solve. You try and try, but keep falling back on old habits and working each day until 2am.
How do you solve it? It comes down to firewalling.
Firewall by Time and Day
The first thing you need to do is determine when you will work, and only work during those hours. If work spills over, you need to have the self-discipline to say, “I can pick this up in the morning.”
The most common objection to this idea is that emergencies are constantly coming up. If emergencies are constantly cropping up, you need to do one of two things:
• Improve your personal productivity and get your act together.
• Manage your clients better—emergencies suddenly crop up less often when they know your boundaries.
The truth is that for most people, the first problem is the real problem. Worse still, most people with the first problem use the excuse that it’s the second problem. Next time you find yourself cursing a client for throwing you into a midnight spin, ask yourself: is this really their fault, or did I manage this poorly?
Firewall by Location
When your home and professional life occur in the same place, it is absolutely essential to firewall by location. You need to keep personal and professional locations totally separate.
If you live in a studio apartment or some other one-room accommodation, this isn’t impossible. You just have to learn to firewall without actual walls: pick a corner, stick your desk there, and refuse to go near it when you’re not working.
Similarly, you need to define areas where work can’t take place, such as the living room and the bedroom. Some people say they work best in the bedroom (no, your dirty buggers, I didn’t mean it like that), and that’s fine—just make sure there is somewhere in your home you can be work-free. Though I’m willing to bet people who say they work best in the bedroom have poor work-life balance!
If you feel the need to get away from your desk, don’t take your laptop over to the couch. Go be a hipster and hang out at the café, or if you don’t need free café wifi, go sit on a bench in the park or at the beach.
Just don’t get sand in your keyboard.
Firewall Your Communication
If you’ve read my work for long elsewhere, you’re probably sick of hearing me talk about this. If you need to get work done, I always say, firewall your incoming communication channels.
Well, I’m not talking about that right now; I’m talking about when you don’t want to get anything done! If you’re not working, you still need to firewall your communication lines in case you end up working when you shouldn’t be.
If you have been clever enough to separate your personal and professional communication lines, just turn the business phone and cell off. Sign out of business email. If they’re combined, you may just have to do some dodging and let the phone ring out. I use the same cell for everything, so it can be difficult to do.
Money Isn’t Everything
I know that my problem with work-life balance ultimately came from the desire to earn more income. I loved the fact I could support my family, but I wanted to go further and be able to take them out for the day without worrying about cash, or buy them a plasma TV. Okay, that wasn’t for them.
I recently made a move that significantly reduced my income. But you know what? I’m happier, and I enjoy the money I do have more. And the things I bought when I was making more money? I’m enjoying them more, too!
Be careful of falling into the trap of sacrificing your life for more money. If you want to make more than you’re making, find a way to do it without making that sacrifice or there’s just no point to having the extra cash to begin with.
What Constitutes Balance?
What is balance? How much time needs to be set aside for work and how much time needs to be reserved for yourself?
It’s really an individual thing and it comes down to a variety of factors. How much do you need to rest to become optimally productive for the week that follows? Personally, I need a day. Some need two. Some need a day every two weeks, but don’t ask me how they do it.
There are other factors—how much time does you family need from you? Can you meld your personal relaxation time in with family time, or do you need to separate them? Do you have a choice anyway?
Decide what you need to recharge your batteries, and be honest. The temptation is to underestimate it. But if you underestimate it, you’re not doing your clients a favor, because you’ll just be sending them worse work.
Qoute from Bhagvad Gita
I drive joy
There was a doctor in Benaras who spent 5 minutes in the morning and evening for mediation on God. Knowing this, his colleagues and friends laughed at him. One day they argued that he was wasting ten precious minutes on something, which he had been misled into believing. The doctor replied, “Well, if God does not exist, I agree that I am wasting ten minutes a day. But, if He exists? I am afraid you are wasting your entire lifetime. I prefer to waste ten minutes rather than a lifetime. Why should you grudge me the 10 minutes joy that I derive from? I am not robbing you of your joy; why should you rob me of mine. He asked. The critics were silenced. –Baba- Chinna Katha
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Success is waiting for you

Monday 21 March-2011
Success is waiting for you
You can start at ifanytime you want to be successful. But you have to start.
You would not accomplish anything if you wait for all the possible objections to be overcome. Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Don’t be afraid to live. Don’t wait for things to change. Don’t wait until you have more time. Until you are less tired. Until you get the promotion, until you settle down. Don’t wait for a major event in your life to occur you begin to live.
Begin where you are. Work where you are. The hour you are wasting now, dreaming of some far off success, is crowded with tremendous possibilities.
When you take the first step, your mind will mobilize all its forces to assist you. Once you have started, all that is within you and unknown forces around you will come to your assistance.
The only way to start on the road to success is to move your feet, one step at a time in the direction you want to go. Success is waiting for you.
Health and Happiness
The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion , sleep, music and laughter. Have faith in God-learn to sleep well-Love good music-See the funny side of life,-And health and happiness will be yours.
Work hard towards 100 per cent efficiency
Aim well in life and do anything extraordinary that ahs not been done before . set your heart to reach your goal. Let patient effort be your best friend . Determine to occupy a front seat in the drama of life.
Fill all your waking hours with useful thoughts and fruitful work. Tackle boldly your ‘today’s’ and plan your ‘tomorrows’ and march to excellence, the highest point of whatever you do.
You have to work hard to bring out the best in you. Heightens of great men reached and kept were attained by ceaseless effort and hard work. They burnt the midnight oil while others restfully slept.
Have some useful purpose, some new field of knowledge, some new interest for which you have the aptitude and aim at the top, you have the inborn God-given potentialities . you are flower which must not blush unseen and wast its sweetness in the desert air. Mediocrity has to perish, it has no place in live. It will only be your laziness and inaction which will not allow your inborn worth to flower into fruition.
Once you have chosen your goal, you must work always go forward upward and on ward on the path of progress that leads to the top, Success comes to people who do and dare.
Between two evils, choose , neither, between two goods choose both.
Sure ways to please people
Pleasing people does not mean flattery which is often false and indulged in for some selfish end.
Pleasing people means being pleasant to them rather than unpleasant , friendly instead of unfriendly, helpful, welcoming and cooperative, not indifferent to the presence and needs of others.
We are not likely to have genuine desire to please people if we are not interested in them. If we do not care and have no desire to develop points of contact, we will be too much wrapped up on ourselves to bother about pleasing anybody else.
This will arise only when it is only getting something we want instead of giving. When we are concerned with ourselves we desire to be ‘better’ and have ‘more’ than the ‘rest’. Such an attitude comes between us and others resulting in every and competition. Thus we are more likely to try to score over them then please them. Instead of being pleasant there is friction and conflict.
Being interested in people means looking outwards away from’ Us’ . We may forget about ourselves while we are interested in others and in what is going on around us. Because we are interested, it naturally comes to us to be cooperative and helpful.
Liking people always springs from interest in them. You cannot like people if you are indifferent . interest result in sharing of activity which provides opportunities to meet people and understand them better.
When we have fellow feeling for one another our words have the genuine element of truth about them and our actions harmonies with our words.
Liking people and experiencing fellow feelings for them helps us to see their problems clearly. We can understand when people are worried, recognize when they are tired and unwell.
To be able to put ourselves in the other fellow’s place and make allowances helps us avoid misunderstanding and friction. We encourage other when we show them that they are liked and wanted.
Quote from The Essence of the Gita
Karma Leads to Knowledge
A great confusion can arise if we don’t keep in mind that work is the only means to knowledge. All kinds of work, from the lowest to the highest , help us advance toward the attainment of knowledge if we do work without calculating our own gain and loss. In India millions of people married as well as monastic, are making the effort to attain knowledge. This is indeed very good. But ninety-nine percent of them have not given up consideration of their own self-interest and they are busy trying to evade work as much as possible by dubbing it the product of ignorance.
I drive joy
There was a doctor in Benaras who spent 5 minutes in the morning and evening for mediation on God. Knowing this, his colleagues and friends laughed at him. One day they argued that he was wasting ten precious minutes on something, which he had been misled into believing. The doctor replied, “Well, if God does not exist, I agree that I am wasting ten minutes a day. But, if He exists? I am afraid you are wasting your entire lifetime. I prefer to waste ten minutes rather than a lifetime. Why should you grudge me the 10 minutes joy that I derive from? I am not robbing you of your joy; why should you rob me of mine. He asked. The critics were silenced. –Baba- Chinna Katha
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Mind Nourishes Success Or Failure

Monday 3rd January-2011
Mind Nourishes Success Or Failure
A strong interaction exists between mind and body. Not only in health but in every phase of life the mind plays a far greater part than most of us realize. It is often the reason for success or failure.
Email Coue popularized an auto-suggestion by asking his patients to often repeat the words;” Every day and in every way I am getting better and better.” Not only did he cure thousands by this method but helped many on road to success.
Cholera is caused by a microbe which is killed instantly by stomach acids. The one thing that stops the flow of acid is fear and panic if a patient is given a substance that he is assured will render him immune , the acid continues to flow , destroying the microbe.
Some authorities wish to abolish examination because many able students, out of fear, become nervous the moment they face question papers. There minds do blank whereas other students, less talented, achieve higher marks. .
Every teacher should use psychology to convince his students that examinations are meant to be test them on the work they have done and the books they have read. If he encourages them with positive suggestion, any student gain pass marks. A good teacher builds up confidence of a student while a bad teacher terrifies him into failure.
Examination do not end at school or university. They continue throughout life; for e.g. when interviewed for a job, or examined for promotion. Success depends on your mental attitude which should be developed as you progress through life.
Your mind is the most powerful instrument your possess. Intellect often falls unless the mind is controlled and this can be done by setting for it more task to strengthen.
One need a news report which runs something like thins. “Rajesh, who started as n office boy at Rs77/- a month forty years ago had risen to the level of Chairman of a reputed company.”
A host of office boys must have been taken on by the company; what happened to them all? Most of them must have argued. “How can I get anywhere in such a big company with so many intelligent men above me?’ some must have risen to be clerks. Other s must have struggled on to higher offices, but Rajesh alone had convinced himself that he was as able as the best of them. He had studied hard, attended evening college, and the higher he rose the easier he found the going, till eventually he became the Chairman.
As you rise in your career and find yourself on level with men you thought were giants, you will find that they re neither cleverer nor more efficient than you.
While employed in a company, a Youngman wrote over 200 articles in the spare time and had many rejected by the publishers. But he convinced himself that he could write. He threw up his job and in three months got published over 50 articles. Since then he had more than 500 articles in print.
No matter what you tackle , give yourself an auto-suggestion that you can win and that makes your task easier. It is the mind that nourished success or failure. Believe you have the worth and intelligence to succeed and you are on the way to success. Belief, intelligent hard work and patience assure solid success. You will be what you think you are worth of.
Between saying and doing , many a par of shoes is worn out.
Quote from the Essence of the Bhagavad-Gita
Arjuna however is not able to follow this teaching easily; he keeps forgetting it.For this raso Sri Krishna tells him that all don’t have to follow the same path; either we should do all works as a matter of duty, with no thought of self-interest , or we should give up the pursuit of desire and greed, and take up monastic life dedicated to a specific ideal. The result of following either of these paths is the same. This is because both paths teach us detachment. Total renunciation of the lower self is the only way to perfection.
Even –secualr work done for one’s own enjoyment and pleasure gradually teaches us the value of detachment. The sage Kapila , the fathe of the Samkhya philosophy, says that the creation of the world is an amazing enterprise of nature(prakrit) designed specifically to make the Self (pursa) realize its own glory.
I drive joy
There was a doctor in Benaras who spent 5 minutes in the morning and evening for mediation on God. Knowing this, his colleagues and friends laughed at him. One day they argued that he was wasting ten precious minutes on something, which he had been misled into believing. The doctor replied, “Well, if God does not exist, I agree that I am wasting ten minutes a day. But, if He exists? I am afraid you are wasting your entire lifetime. I prefer to waste ten minutes rather than a lifetime. Why should you grudge me the 10 minutes joy that I derive from? I am not robbing you of your joy; why should you rob me of mine. He asked. The critics were silenced. –Baba- Chinna Katha
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