Balancing Your Crazy-Busy Life

It's the end of another productive Saturday, weeding, cleaning out the garage, and supervising a couple of my teenage neighbors whom I hired to move garden bricks around. Sounds like a lot of work for a Saturday! What happened to rest and play on the weekend?

Always on Purpose
If you're like me, almost every moment these days is spent on purpose, doing what needs to be done. When I've finished one project, I barely have time to sigh with relief before I'm on to the next one!

How can we maintain our sanity with such demands on our time?

Three Keys for Balance
What works for me is to keep coming back to three things: make a plan, clean out and complete.

It doesn't matter in which order I approach these. I simply need to do them.

Make a Plan
Making a plan can be thoughtfully listing my top priorities in life -- my "big rocks" based on the story in Steven Covey's book, First Things First. Although I do this every year, and most items stay the same, a few items do change.

Making a plan can be entering and checking appointments and tasks in my calendar. Or it can be hastily scribbling my "to do" list for today. I am lost without my lists! If I don't make lists, I worry. The lists circulate endlessly in my head causing lots of fretful stress.

I seldom get to all the items I write down as action items for the day, but I usually manage to get the important ones handled. The rest get added to another list for another day.

Clean Out
Cleaning out means to keep reducing the clutter. Almost every day, I need to go through the mail and throw out as much as possible right away. Weekly, I go through my pile of magazines and pull our a few articles or recipes, file them and toss the rest. I keep my piles of papers for classes organized in files or throw them out promptly if I won't be likely to use them again.

It's not just the paper. I work in brief moments to get rid of clothing I no longer wear and household items we no longer use. When I spot a blouse with a stain or pants that don't fit, I carry it to a donation box in the garage. Once or twice a year, I send them on to benefit others.

Complete
Completing means to finish what I start. If I'm grading a pile of papers, I prefer to work diligently until I finish. If I can't finish in this session, I like to come back promptly and get it done. Folding clothes? Keep at it or keep coming back to it until they are all properly put away.

If I'm reading a book but don't really like it halfway through, instead of leaving it on my table, I turn to the last page, read that and "declare it done." I put it back on the shelf, return it to the library, or put it in my donation box. No more visible clutter, no more internal clutter of that incompletely read book pulling on my energy.

Squeezing in Time
You may be wondering how you can work these strategies into your own crazy-busy life.

Start small and do a little bit at a time.

Planning
If you don't already, try making a To Do list for the day while you are having your morning coffee. If you're groggy for an hour after waking, jot down that list the night before, so you have it ready to guide you the next morning. Cross items off, or highlight them as you complete them for a fun sense of accomplishment.

One student said simply getting a daily agenda book and writing in his classes, assignments, study times and times for friends and fun made him a better and much happier student.

Completing
Sometimes, you may want to set a timer to study one subject for 20 minutes. When the timer rings, that small study session is complete. Move around, blink, breathe, stretch, have some water. Set the timer for your next session. Complete that one. Dance to your favorite tune for three minutes. Set the timer for your next session and complete it. Make a cup of your favorite tea or cocoa.

Do you have a term paper looming? Twice, I wrote lengthy e-books by setting my wind-up snowman timer for 15-minute segments. Setting a task to write non-stop for fifteen on each sub-topic really gets the words pouring out. Editing is for later. Check it out to see if this technique will work for you. This would be useful only after you've located and understood all your research.

Do you get the idea? Completions don't have to be big hairy deals. You can make great progress with small chunks of activity, completing each one in turn.

Cleaning Out
Once you have your major priorities for the day planned or executed, you can handle the smaller tasks like cleaning out as opportunities arise. For instance, if you see a three inch stack of papers on your dining table, grab the top one and 1) decide what to do about it -- and immediately toss it, file it, or take action. If it needs an action step, 2) if it can be done in five minutes, go ahead and take the needed action, or 3) if it will take longer, schedule time in your calendar or put it on your task list to take the appropriate next steps. There, that is one thing you have handled for right now. You've just done all that can be done with that piece of paper in this moment. Repeat with the rest of the stack as time permits. Keep coming back to it.

This approach also works if you want to schedule a fifteen minute block of time for cleaning out.

For clothing and household items that go unused, ask yourself a few questions. Have I used this in the past year? Am I truly likely to use it this next year? If no to either of these, seriously consider letting it go. Do I use it only for a holiday once a year? (If so, keep it in a special place.) Is it broken, torn, worn, outdated, ill-fitting? Either fix it or get rid of it. There is little point in hanging onto something you cannot use and enjoy.

Hope these ideas are helpful. Have fun with them.