Quality time

I am unable to maintain a healthy work-life balance or I am unable to give quality time to my family. Do you also feel like wise?

I guess such sentences are used as effective marketing tool, to indirectly indicate that Organization should take a note that I am working relentlessly,  almost 7*24 OR to demonstrate some kind of crib or frustration.
Could there be any thing more to it...or can something be done about it?

In search of quality time

The first step is to look around and identify people who don't seem to have any complaints about finding quality time.

We see many people around who are career oriented and perform extremely well at work, at the same time they attend various social and family functions.

They manage to go for a vacation and even fulfill their hobbies like trekking, or playing some instrument or they even participate in competitions/sports etc.

There are many ladies who manage their kids & husband, house hold activities, social activities PLUS are on top of their career - Hats off to them.

One would always invariably find that

1. Such people appear ever green or ever fresh.
2. Such people are very enthusiastic about what they do. They hardly appear to be drained unless off course they are not keeping well.
3. Such people are open to adjust - meaning open to bend/curtail their routine.
4. Such people can set and adjust their priorities - meaning can balance their time, relationship very well.
5. Such people use the available tools in hand - always keen to find ways / alternatives.
6. Such people respect other people's time. When at fault, they are open to say "sorry" or "thank you" and they mean it.

There is an old trick used by many "To show I am very busy or very important I make other people wait v/s In trying to juggle other things sometimes other people might need to wait BUT I make up by providing 100% justice to the time given - when I give they get my 130%"

 
Quality has to be something special, precious, very near & dear, something I wont like to miss or something I ensure I wont miss.
But I believe the real challenge is to find time, in first place.

Simple tricks to find FREE time

Like the pond accumulates every drop of rain water one need to start accumulating free time, stich it together to get a BIG time slot.

Here is the simplest example I think many of us miss or ignore.
There are various occasions when we have a holiday on a Thursday or Tuesday.

There are two ways to look at it...
the simpler option is simply swipe Thursday with Friday or Monday with Tuesday. In software industry this is pretty much possible.

Now we get 3 consecutive days off which can be utilized the way one wants.

There is a much better option, by simply putting couple of hours more between Monday to Wednesday, the team can pretty much opt to take Friday as off. In simple words whatever is the target for Friday achieve it on Wednesday. This is a perfect WIN-WIN-WIN situation.

• From organization perspective they like deliverable to happen, and target being met.
• From client perspective they love to see the deliverable coming to them ahead of time. This also gives them more time to evaluate the deliverable and thus get more time for UAT.
• Finally we get 4 consecutive days off

Likewise one could find plenty of opportunities during the entire day to accumulate time.

The easiest one is to plan for the targets a day in advance. One only needs to be realistic while planning the targets and must also consider the unforeseen aspects of his/her job.

Finally, do you often end up doing crisis management, meaning when you start doing things they are already in URGENT state?
Well I guess some thing needs to change, though the change is small, the result would be dramatic.

Work today for tomorrow and Think today for day after!

Hmmm, Now we have ALL the time in this world - MAKE IT COUNT!