Striking a Balance within the Mad Rush

This year has been a great year for me in sixx aspects.

• Great Show at work and climbing up the ladder kind of stuff.
• My first 21K.
• More quality Time with my family.
• Enjoying doing up my new home.
• Lucky enough to make a few quality relationships.
• And a perfect weekly routine coming together.

Boy, believe me that is a LOT of hard work, especially if you have a demanding job like mine and a growing son. But I have constantly believed that you can have the cake and eat it, as long as you learn to time-box the whole thing. :-) 

So without wasting much time.., presenting here are the sixx learning’s of my life about work-life balance.

• Time box every activity. 

Never do anything beyond one hour. Whether it’s cooking or doing a presentation for your boss or fixing a P1 issue at work. And most important, time-box Facebook - not more than 15 minutes in a day.

• Plan, Plan and Plan

Especially the cooking schedule. I love to cook for my family. Hence I put together an excel clearly stating what type of food we eat every day for a week. Once I had this template, it was easy for me to make sure every meal was healthy and well balanced. At work -Always have a weekly plan and weekly milestones, Never start work without a plan or a tangible target.

• Innovate,Problem Solve and Improve

Whatever you do, constantly innovate and problem solve and help others. The quality of our work goes a long way in making up for the fact that we as working mothers are available only for about 8-9 hours in a day. Always try and make a home at work. A woman can make a big difference when it comes to building great teams. Humility and a nice smile should be the ingredients to make our days brighter at work.

• Delegate and Outsource

Keep only the core with you and outsource the rest. Get a maid to completely take care of the house, and have a set routine for her. Focus only on key activites like cooking and planning.

• Fitness Routine both Mental and Physical

Running works the best for me. It clears my head and makes me more productive. Choose whatever suits you the best. But 45 minutes of physical activity in a day should be no-compromise area. Read 30 minutes a day and meditate fifteen minutes daily.

• Socializing

Limit it to 5 minutes a day at work. :-) Believe me it works.The lesser you talk, the more you work and the more people respect you. Look for quality relationships and not quantity.

Well, I am still not there yet. I still need to look at my perfect plan for the week. And I am hoping the list above will serve as a time tested tool for one and all, specially the many gorgeous women out there. So just go for it..!!

Today's guest post is brought to you by my friend Saambavi who I have known since September 2010. Extremely diligent with her work, she is one of the most productive working mom that I have (and probably will) ever met. She loves what she does, does it better than the rest, all with a smile, exceeding expectations on all fronts - personal, professional, social.

Every Sunday, the forum is open for you all to share your views to the rest of the world through this blog. The arena is unlimited, the theme similar - anything that touches you, and can help someone else, in six points should make up a post. 

I will look forward to your emails to keep the guest series going.

Squeeze out more from your Time

More and more people (around me, including yours truly) complain how there is just no time that they have for themselves. Work takes away all of their week, and chores make up majority of the weekend. Here is my list of things which will let you manage your time better, and may be have some time for yourself.

• Separate tasks under Weekday and Weekend categories - tasks like visiting the dry cleaner, refilling the kitchen store, getting your vehicle pollution checked are best done over the weekend. Weekday should be reserved for indispensable tasks that need to be done daily.

• Few activities can be combined with television - such as chopping vegetables, catching up on social networks, sifting through the Page3

• Make use of internet for banking and bills - even now, many of us line up the bank or bill payment queues for simple tasks. Update yourself periodically with the services that your bank or service provider caters online (Yes, those guys too are getting better - what was not available online may be available now.) This can save you a lot of time and hassle.

• Overlap social phone calls when waiting on something - and here, I do not mean while on the road. That is a strict No.

• Group tasks in similar travel directions together. Both cost and time effective.

• Plan weekly things on Sunday evening - such as probable work wear for the rest of the week, your lunch menu, any important thing you may need during the week.

Minimize your travel time to work

In last 5 years of traveling in different directions to work, I have noted a pattern. Monday morning and Friday evenings boast of the densest traffic. Why, you may think. Well, there is no answer. Only theories. People travel out of city and are coming or going back on this route. Everyone is starting on the same time because no one wants to be late for office on Monday and party on Friday. People using the public travel prefer to use their private vehicles on these days. I, for the lack of patience to deal with the crowded public transport, drive on my own every single day, and pretty much follow the same timings every weekday. And because I am one of the few lucky ones who still lives in the same city she was born and grew up in, I do not fit into any of these brackets. So the only option I have is to bear it, or come up with some pointers that may help others like me. Here we go. 

• Skew your schedule - start and end the day about one hour earlier from the rest of the office.

• Know the alternative routes to work in case a particular point is stuck.

• Health check your car for air and fuel on Sunday evening. Avoid to do it en route work.

• Listen to radio for any sudden announcements of heavy traffic. If yes, the second bullet point may come handy.

• Having a GPS enabled phone helps, specially on foggy winter mornings. Worked for me, twice.

• Being connected with friends on common work route so that they can alarm you of any blockage. Thanks to my friends, who have been always kind enough to inform me of such incidents.

 This is my list of saving on the time on road, what is yours?