Datasheet

Part I: Preparing for Personal Productivity

Making work/life balance

your number one priority

When you let your professional and personal lives get out of whack, not only

do you find it difficult to maintain your daily well-being but you can also end

up regretting, at some point in the future, the toll your work demands took

on your personal life.

The real cost of my own work/life imbalance became apparent to me as the result

of two separate life-altering incidents: First, at age 40, when I was diagnosed with

cancer and then again, at age 49, when my life and business partner of 16 years

died suddenly. Both events made me question the amount of time and energy that

I had devoted to my professional career at the expense of my personal life. (This

included long workdays, working weekends, and taking very few vacations.)

Having to face my own mortality and then the passing of my close partner

drove home the notion that you can never get back the time you worked

when you should have been playing. It also made it abundantly clear that,

when all is said and done, you’ll never have to worry about regretting any

of the times that you didn’t stay longer at the office or work more. On the

contrary, you run the real risk of someday being plagued with doubts about

the time that you sacrificed your personal life for your work and the time for

yourself that you can never get back.

I don’t care how great your job is or how rewarding it may be monetarily,

the only way to truly avoid any possibility of regret later on is to make sure

that your professional and personal lives remain in relative harmony now. In

creating such harmony, you not only avoid later disappointment but actually

create a level of personal satisfaction that permeates both work and home

environments.

Getting your work and life back into balance isn’t something that’s going to

happen all by itself. To get anywhere with it, you have to make creating this

type of equilibrium a real priority. In fact, at least for the time being, you

have to make it your number one personal and professional goal. One of the

best ways to get the ball rolling in this department entails reevaluating your

professional objectives, both short- and long-term (a process that I outline in

Chapter 2).

Imagining what work/life balance

would look like in your life

Before attempting to take any of the steps necessary to become more

productive at work and thus bring your work and personal life back into

better balance, you can really benefit from taking some time to imagine