So Much For The 9-5... How's Your Work / Life Balance?

A common complaint amongst workers these days is work life balance and the amount of hours they are having to put into their job and their work.

As the title states, so much for the 9-5. The average full-time worker these days is putting in nearly 10 hours a day, that's 50 hours a week which is up from 47 hours back in 2007. Even sadder however is that nearly 25% say they are working over a 60 hour workweek.

So how do you go about taking back your time?

1. Prioritize... Do your most important or most difficult work first. We all know it's easy to put off the difficult tasks and it's easy to want to knock out a few easy things early, however delaying those tasks that are a pain is a sure way to leave things unfinished or work longer than you otherwise would have to.

2. Be Productive... Try making lists of things you need to get done and checking them off. Also, try to write down everything you do in half hour increments. You may find that you waste time or take more time than needed doing poor tasks. Set limits for yourself or breaks to do off task activities and get back to the productive stuff on time.

Manage Messages... E-mail is a necessary evil. It's easy to get sidetracked checking and responding to e-mails you don't need to. Decide how often you need to check your email and shut it down between visits to e-mail. Don't just leave it open all day.

If this is a topic you're interested in and you're interested in gaining a better work life balance I'd highly recommend reading the book The 4 Hour Workweek.