 Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives her clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, and handouts, and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Hi, and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes, practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. I've had a request to do a presentation on ways to find work-life balance or just life balance. So that's what we're going to talk about today. The first thing you really need to do in order to create and maintain balance in life is to kind of get it all laid out so you can see what you're dealing with. I suggest creating a calendar and blocking out the must-dos. So for example, if you know you've got to go to work eight to four, five days a week, block that out so you know that time is already taken up and it's non-negotiable. Other must-dos that you probably should block out include sleep. When you are sleep deprived, you are going to be less efficient, less effective, and just generally less happy. So it's important to make sure that you get enough sleep so you can be on your A game as much as possible. A couple other things you want to include in those must-dos, shopping. Yeah, you may not love shopping, but every once in a while you've got to go out and get a gallon of milk and you spend a lot less time shopping if you plan for it and do it all at once than if you're running to the market every other day. So make a list, do your shopping, block that out. Laundry and house cleaning are also must-dos that you don't want to forget about because a lot of times our time management gets kind of sidetracked because we forget about some of these things that we have to do, like laundry and house cleaning. Now you don't have to necessarily make it white glove ready, but you do need clean underwear and you do want to do the dishes every once in a while. So figure out how often you need to do laundry and house cleaning and about how long it takes, block that out. And then doing bills. Now a lot of bills can be set to auto pay, they're paid online, so it's not such a big deal, but you do need to make sure you block out time to do that because it does take up time in your day. So once you have your calendar set and you've blocked out all of those mundane must-dos, then you can go back and start figuring out with the time you have left what else can you kind of fit in there. So make a list of all the things that you're trying to juggle because there's probably a lot of them. I know I tend to get a little overwhelmed sometimes and get too many things going, too many balls in the air, so to speak. And I have to kind of write it down and then prioritize what I want to get done right now. A lot of times I have too many things to do in a normal seven day week. So I've got to figure out which things can be put off until I finish something else and make room for it. So, you know, it does take a little bit of thinking and balancing. And if you're not one of those people who love schedules, that's OK. You don't have to create a really strict schedule. What I want you to do is just get a reasonable idea about how much time you've got to work with in terms of doing things that you want to do or maybe going back to school or starting a hobby or whatever you want to do. Once you've made your list, you've prioritized. You've identified the things that you really want to kind of get done. Put those on the calendar. So you know that every Saturday you're going to go hiking if that's your thing. Or if you are taking a night class, you know, that was obviously probably blocked out already, but you've got study time in there. So you want to block out time for studying because that's a priority. Going back to school, getting your degree, whatever. That's a priority for you right now. And that's not something that you can really put off. You can't put off the studying and do something else if you're enrolled in a class. So get those things down. If you find that you're starting to run out of time and space, that's OK. Just kind of take a breath and move on to some of these other things and see if maybe you can adjust your calendar a little bit in a few minutes. The next thing is to stop saying yes. Too many times people who have poor work-life balance or poor life balance say yes whenever anybody asks them to do anything, whether it's run to the market for them or go out drinking or dancing or whatever it is. So stop saying yes right away. Remember that you've got those priorities. You don't have a whole lot of extra time right now maybe. So you don't have a whole lot of wiggle room. Reserve your yeses for the things that you really, really, really want to do and they're really important to you. Your friends are going to understand if you are working a full-time job and going back to school or maybe you're working a full-time job and you've got little kids at home, your friends will understand if you can't say yes to everything. So work on setting some boundaries. So you have time to do what you want to do, time to do what you need to do, and you can maintain your sanity. Ask for help. There are some things that you don't have to do all by yourself. Now, studying you've got to do. Going to class, going to work, you've got to do those things. But maybe going shopping or doing the house cleaning or something else, you could delegate to someone. And if you have the ability to, you might even be able to hire somebody to come in and do the house cleaning so you have time freed up. You might be able to ask a friend to pick up your dry cleaning so you don't have to go do that or to pick up your groceries for the week when they're doing their grocery shopping. It's not a big deal for a lot of people and it can help free you up if you're in a crunch for time in one particular week. The next thing you can do is combine activities. So if you think you need to call your mom every day or once a week, that's great, you know, that's wonderful. I'm a mother, I'd love to hear from my kids. You may need to combine it with some other things that don't require a whole lot of brain intensity, such as doing laundry. You know, you can call your mom while you're folding your laundry, knock out two birds with one stone. You can exercise while you're cleaning the house, you know, put some weights on your ankles when you vacuum, do it intentionally. When you pick things up, make sure to squat down. You can actually spend a lot of energy cleaning up. I know the days that I stay home to clean the house and work on the farm instead of going to the gym, I find that I'm really sore the next day. You can also combine exercise with socializing. If you've got friends that you really like to see but you really want to get your exercise in, you can have them exercise with you. You can go on a hike together, go on a walk together, something where you can accomplish both things at the same time. If you are an auditory learner, especially, you may be able to study and exercise. When I was in college, I would listen to my notes while I was on the treadmill. If you are not an auditory learner, that's not probably gonna help you very much, but you can combine them. I've also seen people read while they're sitting on a stationary bike or something. I don't know how they do that without getting motion sick, but more power to you. So be creative about how you combine things in order to try to fit everything into the day. You can also do things like listening to the news while you're in the car or while you're walking to class if listening to the news takes up a lot of your time and it's important to you. Or if you ride the bus, you may be able to check in on your Facebook while you're riding the bus instead of just kind of sitting there daydreaming. So combining activities can be really important. Simplify is the next thing. Too often, we get caught up in making things more difficult than they have to be. And if you're really crunched for time and or you just don't like doing it, I never liked packing my lunch. So having TV dinners or whatever they're technically called for lunch can be helpful. So you don't have to think about what to pack. If you are single and you have the means to do it, you can have TV dinners for a couple of meals each day if that is something because they make some real healthy ones now. If that's something that you want to do to save time. Do all your shopping in one day. A lot of time shopping is congregated in one place. So if you need to go to Lowe's, you need to go to Walmart and you need to go to the grocery store. You can do all those. So you don't have to make three separate trips out and back. Get delivery when possible. Amazon, Walmart, there are a lot of different stores that will deliver a fair amount of the different things that you need. Not your perishable goods like your meats and your dairy, unless you're in certain areas. But you can get delivery on things like toilet paper and your non-perishable foods like pasta and cat food, dog food, those sorts of things. And that saves a lot of time. If you can avoid even one trip to the grocery store each week or each month, that'll save you maybe an hour and a half. Keep your wardrobe simple. And for some people, this is easier than for others. But if you're finding that you've got a lot of stuff going on, if it takes you three hours to get ready in the morning, then that's a big chunk of time. So you need to figure out how can you simplify things? Can you set all of your outfits out on Sunday? So you know exactly what you're gonna wear all week long and you don't spend 10 minutes standing in front of the closet going, what to wear? What to wear? I wonder if I have shoes for this. Yeah, we've all been there. So keep your wardrobe as simple as possible, especially if you're strapped for time. The next one is hard, but it's important to do. And that's to eliminate or minimize distractions and time drains. Those things that you get into and you look up and all of a sudden you've lost two hours of your day. Social media is one. Television, Netflix binges, that's another. Some people will also get lost reading the news or surfing the internet. Whatever it is that you find that you kind of get lost when you're doing it and lose a bunch of time. If you can't eliminate it, you may not want to. I wouldn't want to eliminate my Netflix binges. I just have to set some parameters. Set a timer, set some parameters on that. So you're not spending three hours, go in intending to spend 30 minutes and then all of a sudden three hours have passed. Set a timer so you've got to get up and move on to your next thing. Work efficiently. It's easy to just work and work and work, but it's hard to work efficiently unless you're used to it. So the first thing to do is make to-do lists. When I get to the office in the morning, I jot down a list and actually when I'm going to the office, I use voice to text to jot down a list of the things that I have to do that day. So I don't get to work and sit down and go, okay, Collie, what should I do today? Because there's always 15 things in my inbox. So where do I start? So make a to-do list and then you can start whittling that down and work with your preferences. It's easier and more efficient if you're an auditory learner to do things where you're listening to whatever you need to learn. It's easier and more effective to work when your energy is high. If you're a morning person, well, score. Do what you need to do. Do the hardest tasks, the things that require the most concentration. First thing in the morning. That way in the afternoon, when you have your lull, you're not trying to trudge through it. Likewise, if you're a nighttime person, try to schedule your day and your time and what you're doing for the times when you've got energy and each person is a little bit different. And finally, remember to sharpen the saw. That means you need to have rest and relaxation. You need to have good sleep. You need to be able to let your body rest and rebalance so you can wake up and feel refreshed and get focused. If you start getting run down and you're not getting happy in your life and you're not getting sleep in your life, then you're gonna find you're foggy-headed. You have difficulty concentrating. You're tired all the time. And it takes a whole lot more time and effort to get things done. So sleep is important as is rest and relaxation. And rest can mean chilling out with your family. It doesn't have to mean just sleep. So take care of yourself. Those are my top 10 things that I might suggest for helping people find work-life balance. It is not a simple thing, especially if you're working two jobs or you're going to school full-time and going to work full-time and you've got a family, you're gonna have to do some creative juggling. But if you can put it all down, like puzzle pieces on a calendar and figure out where everything can fit in, you might find it's a little bit easier. You might choose to schedule a particular day each week that's going to be like your shopping and cleaning and that kind of day. And then another day that is your rest and relaxation day. Or you might schedule a little bit of each one of those every single day. That's up to you, whether you like to do something and just push through and get it all done or you'd like to do a little smattering here and there. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Join our Facebook group at docsnipes.com slash Facebook or join our community and access additional resources and weekly live group coaching at docsnipes.com. 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