Balancing a hectic lifestyle

Times Reporter

 

Wheatland Business Women are hosting a night of Wine, Women and Wisdom on September 29. The event will take place at the Civic Centre at 6:30 p.m. and everyone is welcome. Tickets are $25. 

Michelle Cederberg is the guest coming in to make the presentation. Cederberg is the author of Got to it!, and is Canada’s newest certified speaking professional. She will be coming in to speak about her accountability journal. Cederberg was recommended to come speak and hopefully inspire people. 

“We heard she has a great message and a great sense of humour to deliver that message,” said Marcy Field, a member of Wheatland Business Women. The message Cederberg plans to deliver is The Energy to Succeed in Business & In Life, Helping people with full schedules and a long list of responsibilities maximize their personal energy.

“If there is one common challenge most of my clients, participants and audiences struggle with it is without a doubt the belief that there just aren’t enough hours in the day.  ‘Too much to do and not enough time to do it.’  We’re busier than ever; working more to ensure job security, simultaneously raising kids or caring for aging parents, juggling career, family, friends, and self in a never-ending chase for a bit of free time,” said Cederberg. 

“75% of Canadians don’t believe that work-life balance is possible.  We’re working more than ever, spending less time with our friends and family, and inevitably watching our health and happiness drift away.”

Many people want to exercise, eat right, build the business, write, partake in leisure activities, socialize with family and friends, try new hobbies, travel, even sleep, said Cederberg. 

“But no matter how badly you want it, your schedule doesn’t seem to have room for it, so you’re tired, busy life stays busy and tiring.”  

Cederberg teaches about how to balance life through small “energizing” steps. The first goal, she said, is to gain energy through self-care. It doesn’t need to be giant leaps to be a success, but instead it can be done by taking small steps every day. 

“Let’s face it, you likely don’t have a lot of free time right now anyway and if you do you probably don’t have the energy or motivation to ‘go big’ out of the gates, so the decision should be easy,” said Cederberg.   

According to Cederberg, if people embrace even small changes in important aspects of their health and scheduling, they will notice significant improvements in energy. 

Tickets are available at businesswomen.ca or call 403-901-4457

 

Finding Work-life Balance When Time and Energy Are Low 2

Time Management Tips 

By Michelle Cederberg

It’s true that if you have more personal energy you’ll get more done, but even the most energetic individual can shift off balance without proper time and schedule management.  Below are 4 scheduling strategies that will do just that.  

1) Overhaul your priorities

Of all the tasks you have to conquer in a typical week, how many of them can be re-scheduled or eliminated?  Re-prioritizing is particularly important in a time-cramped schedule.  Maybe your volunteer efforts need to be scaled back for the moment? It’s possible the car, dog and curtains don’t need to be washed this week.  Look at your home and work-based commitments and diligently eliminate or re-schedule at least one low priority task in each area.

2) Schedule ‘white space’

We all need time during the day to absorb the unforeseen.  If your schedule is jammed from morning to evening, stress will increase when unexpected meetings or emergencies pop up.  Schedule up to 60% of your day and leave 40% for task management and unexpected events.  In an 8 hour work day that means almost 5 hours can be scheduled, leaving just over 3 hours of flexible ‘white space’.

3) Make a ‘two’ do list

The next time you put a task on your ‘to do’ list make a 2nd entry in your schedule – your ‘two’ do entry – for when you will complete it.  When I agreed to do this article I opened my day-timer immediately and blocked out the time I knew it would take me to write it.  That way I could be sure I wouldn’t over-schedule and I’d have time set aside to complete the work before the deadline. 

4) Be wise and revise 

No matter how organized you get, allow yourself the option in work, as in life, to revise.  I open my schedule at the start of each week and review the week ahead.  Depending on my energy and stress levels at that moment, I will give myself permission to revise my upcoming schedule to allow for steps 1 and 2 above to come into play once again.

What would it take to implement even a few of the life-balance steps above?  Why not begin today?  If you embrace even small changes in important aspects of your health and scheduling, you’ll realize significant improvements in energy and output sooner than you think.  Chart your progress as you go, and celebrate your success … one step at a time, because that’s all it takes.