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How to Make Work-Life Balance Work for YOU
Rex Gatto Ph.D., BCC
It was only Tuesday afternoon and already things were piling up for next week. You just came
back from a long lunch with your boss and peer team, walked into your office, and plopped into
the chair. Looking at the afternoon schedule, you feel overwhelmed. If only you could walk
outside for a few minutes, recharge, come back full swing and raring to go. Then reality hits and
you know that if you did that, you would be just delaying the inevitable and would come back to
more work and less time. Panic sets in when you realized how much work you have to do: your
team had six people, and your boss keeps asking you to do more. You have no one to delegate to.
You agonize over not having enough time and letting your family down. Stress is your constant
companion.
You need to devote more time at work, but then home life suffers. You devote time to home life,
and work suffers: this is the Time Seesaw. How can you effectively balance home and work, and
still have time for yourself? Impossible, you think, but…. perhaps not.
Begin by achieving three goals:
• Assess and analyze your time, and identify and address personal and professional time
wasters
• Learn how to improve your productivity through work-life balance
• Learn work-life balance tools for controlling time (meeting agenda is the biggest tool)
Time can be broken into two distinct types according to how it is perceived. First is controlled
time, which is completely under your own control and you have the discretion as to how you will
use it. Second is uncontrolled or reactive time, which is used at the demand of others. The

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telephone rings, your boss drops in, or an employee stops by to ask questions are all examples of
this second type of time.
Get a Handle on Controlling Your Time
To begin the process of controlling your own time, you need to establish a balance between
controlled and uncontrolled time. Based on an average day, assess your time, analyze your time,
and identify controlled time and uncontrolled time at work. There should be an even ebb and
flow balance between controlled and uncontrolled time in your schedule during the workday.
Today’s Priorities and Activities (work and home)
List your activities that fall under controlled and uncontrolled time:
Controlled Time Uncontrolled Time
_______________ _________________
_______________ _________________
_______________ _________________
Assessing your time at work and home
In order to understand your own relationship with time, you need to know where your time goes.
To begin to figure this out, respond to the following six areas in your life. How much time do
you spend with family, dedicated time for yourself, spend at work or working at home,
enjoyment (de-stressors), and time worrying and thinking about job responsibilities.
• Family
• Self (for yourself, examples: daily exercise, meditation, reading)
• Work
• Hobbies (enjoyment)
• Worries/stressors
• Job responsibilities
Keep a journal and review it each quarter to notice changes and priorities with your time.
Another important aspect of controlling your time is to identify those activities and actions that
are daily and or weekly time wasters. What are you doing that really pays no dividend toward
your productivity, work production, detracts from quality work or time with the family and
which provides little to no satisfaction?
Identify Time Wasters in the following areas:
• Organization (work, office, files, email, home)

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• Lack of resources
• Socializing
• Others late with work that prevents you from doing work
• Emails
• Phone calls
• Meetings
• Redoing work
• Ineffective employees
• Drive time
• People dropping in
• Other
Look at where your time falls through the cracks and develop a plan to lessen the time wasters
and their impact. Keep a journal and review it once a month.
To Improve Work/Life Balance, implement any or all of the suggestions below:
• Focus on what needs to be achieved (goals and results) and stay focused.
• Set realistic goals.
• Focus on performance standards (home and work).
• Focus on the big picture, not minute-to-minute changes. What is your destination?
(Create an AM and PM schedule not hour to hour)
• Focus on the trade off for performing one task versus another task.
• Think, organize, and then act. (Plan, do, check)
• Focus on priorities
• Focus on your own work, not on the work of others
• Be sensitive to personal obligations (home and work)
• Plan for interruptions and do not let them anger you
• Don’t over commit by packing so much in a day that all you do is run
• Have a place where you always keep your ‘to do’ and ‘I did’ lists. I Did List: end of the
day, focus on what you accomplished not what you did not get to)
• Use your prime time wisely (when is your best time – Are a morning person?)
• Before you act, know the goal, develop a strategy, get input through participation and
focus on results
• Use a visual of your choice to outline time commitments
Basic Suggestions to improve your time
• Organize, prioritize, use self-discipline
• Schedule family time in your daily outlook planner
• Multi-task (drive, listen to CDs or voice mail)
• Effectively utilize email and voice mail
• Utilize cell phone, have a fax/copier at home
• Learn to say “no”
• Have a commitment to analyze your interactions and daily achievements
• Delegate

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• Outline priorities, analyze goals, and decide how to spend your time
• Structure the workday to be home for dinner for family time
• Plan for long-term initiatives
• Write the “I did list” and “To do list”
• Realize the need for structure and discipline
• Plan for interruptions.
• Stop time wasters
• Create a life mission — a business plan (mission statement and core values) and action
plan.
• Schedule weekly action steps
• Address procrastination
How to Start Your Day
Begin by trying to better utilize fifteen minutes a day, thereby saving one hour and fifteen
minutes a week and five hours a month (60 hours a year). This will be a good start to saving
time. Who said you have to start a day focusing on emails? Start your day with a small project or
continuation of a productive event (data collection, correspondence returning a call rather than
sitting and addressing endless emails – get something done first!)
In Summary
Make sure you ask the appropriate questions as to business and personal goals and establish and
set clear priorities for action.
Remember that the mismanagement of communication is the mismanagement of time.
Time is either a traveling partner or an attacking enemy that is there to destroy your day
and ravage your emotions.
Taken from the Book Seesaw Syndrome Mastering Work-Life Balance by Rex and Mickey
Gatto
Rex Gatto Ph.D., BCC
President
Gatto Associates LLC.
412 344-2277 (Office)
www.rexgatto.com
rex@rexgatto.com