The Secret Formula to Get More Time Managing Work Life Balance

Have you ever caught yourself saying “wow, where did that week go”? or “That year just flew by”, or “I’ve lost track of the days”, or “When am I going to have time to do that”, or “There’s not enough hours in the day”…

These are just a few of the lines we hear from really busy people, and at times I catch myself saying also. The reality is that since Man created a way to measure time, once with the stars and lunar cycles but now usually found on your wrist, on your wall, on your phone, or other electronic gadget we’re constantly reminded and made aware of TIME.

Time is one commodity that once used you can’t get it back. If you’re not making the progress towards your goals or if you’re getting caught up in the busy-ness of business and in life, stressed out because you have too much to do and too little TIME, then there’s a simple formula to help you get back in control of your TIME.

It’s not Time management but SELF Management. You can CHOOSE how you wish to USE TIME.

A simple process I use is the 10:70:20 formula. It’s 10{d9af91d10cbbffe076d8ad234b2e08eef4ad6e717c0eb3b77e0c57618be15d67} Future, 70{d9af91d10cbbffe076d8ad234b2e08eef4ad6e717c0eb3b77e0c57618be15d67} Present, 20{d9af91d10cbbffe076d8ad234b2e08eef4ad6e717c0eb3b77e0c57618be15d67} Past. Every activity we involve ourselves in will fall into one of these categories, and will depend on your Role, or the Role of your team members.

Take a Self Employed painter as an example, working 40 hours per week. Using the 10:70:20 ratio, he might plan his week like this.

4 Hours per week on Future. This would be networking, Sales activity like prospecting, looking for future work, following up on referrals etc.

28 Hours per week would be allocated to planning the job, doing the site measures, getting the supplies, travel to jobs, cleaning up on site. Basically all of the “On the Tools” jobs.

That would leave 8 hours per week to look after the PAST. To get all the invoicing sorted, pay the accounts, do the admin, follow up with the customers etc.

Unless there is TIME allocated for each of these activities it won’t be too long that the busyness, and reactive-ness of the business will prevail and the PAST will become overwhelming and as the saying goes you’ll get “Stuck in the Past”.

Have an Intention to be effective with your TIME, choose to Plan how you will use it, Choose to make TIME for it All and you will HAVE it All.

Step 1 to Managing Work Life Balance with 10:70:20 is to make a list of all the activities you involve yourself in each week. Replay in your mind what you do each day when starting work, right through to finishing the day. What is it you do? For example, taking and making phone calls, quoting, on the tools, sales meetings and presentation, invoicing etc.

Step 2 to Managing Work Life Balance is to record next to each activity the category it fits into. Is it an activity contributing to the FUTURE, PRESENT or PAST. To help you out, think of the Life of a job as in the painters example above.

Step 3 to Managing Work Life Balance is to then record how much time the activities take each week. Add up the hours of each category and total the number of hours spent in each one. What are your percentage ratios?

Step 4 to Managing Work Life Balance is Assess what area is not in the 10:70:20 ratio, If you’re not staying on top of your admin then make time each week to do it. If you don’t think what the consequences will be.