The one thing we all have in common is the 86,400 seconds in a day.  How we use those seconds, is down to your own personal choice. What you need to decide, is what is important to you personally and to ensure that you get your work life balance right.

We often know our work objectives but do you know what it is important in terms of your personal objectives. Have you got your work life balance correct?

Personal time management is about controlling the use of your most valuable (and undervalued) resource.  You need to have a good understanding of how you spend your time and whether you are allocating the right amount to time, to your personal priorities.

Good time management allows us to:

• Do the things we want to do when we want to do them
• Be organised
• Feel in control rather than being controlled
• Reduce stress in our lives

This is a good time to review priorities and what’s important to you.  Have you got the balance right and what changes do you need to make.

For each area of the categories, score from 1 – 10, 1 being poor and 10 being excellent. You score each category twice,  once for how much effort you put into the area and secondly for how important it is to you.

Once you have scored each category, think about where there is an imbalance. This could be where you score high on effort and it is low on importance, what are the reasons you are putting so much effort into that area? Where do you score low on effort and high importance, how can you increase the effort in that area? Think about areas you would like to improve to bring balance to your life.

The next thing to do is to identify 5 things you are going to start doing, and 5 things you are going to stop doing. Use the table below to record them.

Start/Stop Exercise

Take up to ten minutes to think about what you can stop and start doing which will make you happier or help achieve your goals in life.

Doing this exercise, will help you clarify what is important to you personally, and get you to identify changes that you can make, that will create a difference.