Balance Your Workload with a Generous Number of Mini-Vacations for Maximum Productivity by Denis Waitley

By re-energizing and  renewing yourself frequently, you will avoid burnout and become much more  motivated and productive. Don’t keep your nose to the grindstone for years and  wait for retirement to travel. Balance and consistency are the keys. Enjoy the  process, not just the result. Don’t fight the passing of time. Don’t fear it,  squander it, or try to hide from it under a superficial cosmetic veil of fads  and indulgences. Life and time go together. Do enjoy each phase of life. Do  make the most of each day, and draw maximum joy from each moment.

Many people today are  concerned with quality time—time generally defined in part as that spent on  recreation, personal pursuits, time with children, spouses and friends. While I  certainly believe quality time is important, I believe two other aspects of  time are equally important.

First, one must also spend  quantity time. The average father spends less than 30 minutes each week in  direct one-on-one communication with each of his children. How can we possibly  expect good family relationships with so little communication?

Second, one must spend  regular time. Many supervisors and company presidents go for weeks, even  months, without seeing many of their employees. There’s no substitute for  regular meetings and open forums in which managers and team members can share  ideas.

Time has a dual structure.  On one hand, we live our daily routines meeting present contingencies as they  arise. On the other hand, our most ambitious goals and desires need time so  that they can be assembled and cemented. A long-term goal connects pieces of  time into one block. These blocks can be imagined and projected into the future  as we do when we set goals for ourselves. Or, these blocks of time can be created  in retrospect as we do when we look back at what we’ve accomplished.

It’s not in the image of  our big dreams that we run the risk of losing our focus and motivation. It’s  the drudgery and routine of our daily lives that present the greatest danger to  our hopes for achievement. Good time management means that you maximize the  daily return on the energy and mental effort you expend.

Ways to maximize your time  productivity:

• Write down in one place  all the important contacts you have and all of your goals and priorities. Make  a backup copy, preferably on CD, DVD or Zip disc. Write down every commitment  you make at the time you make it.

• Stop wasting the first  hour of your workday. Having the chat and first cup of coffee, reading the  paper, and socializing are the three costliest opening exercises that lower  productivity.

• Do one thing well at a  time. It takes time to start and stop work on each activity. Stay with a task  until it is completed.

• Don’t open unimportant  mail. More than a fourth of the mail you receive can be tossed before you open  or read it, and that includes e-mail.

• Handle each piece of  paper only once and never more than twice. Don’t set aside anything without  taking action. Carry work, reading material, audiotapes and your laptop computer  with you everywhere you go. Convert downtime into uplink time.

• Spend twenty minutes at  the beginning of each week and ten minutes at the beginning of each day  planning your to-do list.

• Set aside personal  relaxation time during the day. Don’t work during lunch. It’s neither noble nor  nutritional to skip important energy input and stress-relieving time.  Throughout the day, ask yourself, “What’s the best use of my time right now?”  As the day grows short, focus on projects you can least afford to leave undone.

• And as we said at the  beginning of this message, take vacations often, mini-vacations of two or three  days, and leave your work at home. The harder you work, the more you need to  balance your exercise and leisure time.

Action Idea: Plan a  relaxing 3-day vacation within the next three months without taking any  business work with you. Reserve it on your calendar this week.