Are you a human being or a human doing? Create and protect your personal time!

One of the challenges in creating a work-life balance lies in the fact that it doesn’t happen by chance. It must be created. And, once created, it must be protected. Zeal.

One of the quickest routes to balance is to set aside some time for yourself each week. Try for at least an hour two or three times a week, but everyone has a personal minimum that must be maintained. What is this personal time for? Anything that is not work. Remember that gym membership? This is when you can really use it. Or get a massage, visit a museum, browse the bookstore, or have lunch with a friend. This is [a part of] the time that will make you a well-rounded and interesting human being instead of a worker bee “human doing”.

The hard part is protecting this time. So often, we make commitments to ourselves and break them when something else comes up. The key to getting the benefit of these self-designations is to consider them as important as a date you make with another person. Yes, sometimes you will have to cancel them. But if you find yourself canceling on more than a rare occasion, you’re not actually making an appointment; rather, you are making a plan that will fail if something better comes along, or if someone else asks you to do something work-related. Getting the benefit requires making the commitment.

Get out your calendar, your PDA, whatever you use to track your time and schedule some time for yourself. RIGHT NOW. Waiting until you know what lawsuits will come your way won’t make it easier to do, it will make it less likely. Although spending time away from your work-related commitments may seem strange at first, commit to trying it for six weeks and see what happens. You will most likely feel more relaxed and find renewed energy for your work.