Datasheet
11
Chapter 1: Planning for Better Balance between Your Work and Personal Life
You regularly work longer than normal hours and/or take work home
with you.
You feel as though much of any given workday is spent unproductively,
laden with ineffective meetings or work interruptions.
You’re fuzzy about the extent of your job responsibilities and/or the job
you thought you were hired to do is not the one you’re doing.
You feel as though you’re trying to do the job of two people.
No matter how many hours you put in or how hard you work, you
repeatedly leave the office with some important task(s) unfinished.
You regularly think about what you couldn’t get done at work when
you’re at home.
You often have the vague feeling that you’re overlooking or forgetting
important tasks that need your attention.
You dread dealing with your e-mail.
Brief physical interactions with co-workers, telephone calls, and/or
incoming e-mail messages become interruptions that take you off task.
You often have trouble locating the information you need in order
to perform a particular work task and have to spend valuable time
searching for it.
As a manager, you have trouble successfully tracking the tasks you
delegate to members of your team. As a member of a team, you have
trouble successfully keeping track of and accomplishing the tasks that
are delegated to you.
You seldom have time to set your daily or weekly work goals and then
lay out and prioritize the objectives necessary to achieve them.
You seldom have time to prioritize the tasks you plan to accomplish
on any given day or within a given week, and when you do get an
opportunity to prioritize the tasks you need to accomplish, you often
have trouble deciding how they should be ranked.
Work forms such a big part of everyone’s life that when clusters of productivity
problems such as the ones included in this checklist crop up, more often than
not they’re bound to end up negatively affecting your personal life in short
order. That’s why you need to get on the productivity band wagon as soon as
you can and nip such problems in the bud. You definitely don’t want to wait
until they get out of hand and start negatively impacting your health, happiness,
and personal relationships.