Create an Elegant Workday
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Create an Elegant Workday
As a professor and mom of two young kids, my days can quickly get overrun with meetings, research projects, spelling tests, meal-prep, and soccer practices. In the midst of this chaos that is working motherhood, work-life balance isn’t something that would be nice to have, it’s essential. Seeing as this podcast is entitled Elegant Balance, you might have guessed that elegance plays a key role in the way that I approach my life – both at home and at work.
Elegance refers to the beauty of something unusually simple and effective. How would you like that to describe your workday, every day? If you think about it, an elegantly balanced life is simply made up a several elegant days. In today’s post, I want to share three simple adjustments that you can make to do just that!
What you will discover:
1. How to leverage your unique rhythms to maximize your productivity
2. How to identify the tasks that will have the biggest impact
3. Why it’s okay to put things down and walk away
I’ve spent a lot of time lately, reflecting on my personal elegant balance journey. In doing so, I’ve realized that I’ve come a long way from the ambitious, perfectionist woman I was at the beginning of my doctoral program. It’s definitely been a slow process, but somewhere along the way I shifted from striving to meet others’ expectations of me with regards to how long, when, and where I worked to defining my own values and standards related to work and family. It is exactly this mindset shift that I want to help each of you to make. Work-life balance isn’t something that will just happen; it won’t just fall into your lap. Instead, it is pursued, created, cultivated and requires a mindset shift from allowing others (like your organization or supervisor) to define balance for you to you taking control and defining it for yourself.
When do you work best?
When I was in graduate school, I started off the program by setting strict work hours for myself. Each day I strived to work a total of 12 hours. I would be at the office by 6:30 each morning, work on coursework and research projects until about 4:30, head home to eat dinner with my husband and then spend another 2 hours reading and/or writing. And let me tell you what… I was miserable. Honestly, I think both my husband and I were miserable. One semester into this routine and we found out we were expecting a baby. This was the catalyst that changed everything. Suddenly I didn’t have the energy to work 12-hour days and even when I tried, my brain was foggy, and I would often end up just staring at the screen or rereading the same paragraph over and over. Clearly, something had to be done.
Like many other moms, pregnancy helped me realize the importance of paying closer attention to my body (it helped that I was writing a dissertation on the effects of stress during pregnancy on the mother and her baby). Instead of forcing a 12-hour day, I started trying to work when I had the energy and brainpower to do so. Four pregnancies later, and I continue this practice. I’ve learned that I am a morning person and that my peak performance occurs between 8am and 12pm. Knowing this about myself has been so powerful! I no longer force myself to write difficult, thought-provoking theory sections of research papers at 2pm when all I really want to do is take a nap. Instead, I plan my day around my natural rhythm to maximize my productivity.
This is a really simple strategy to implement, but like I said before, it can be powerful in helping you get through the workday more effectively. You may already know this about yourself, and if that’s the case all you need to do is start taking advantage of it! If not, the first step is to start paying closer attention to your energy levels throughout the day. When are you feeling at your peak? First thing in the morning? Midmorning? Maybe you’re one of those afternoon workers who is ready to go at 1pm when everyone else is ready for their post-lunch nap.
The point is to get to know yourself and instead of fighting against yourself, embrace yourself. This makes it so much easier to move through the day without feeling overwhelmed or exhausted.
Now that you know your peak productivity times, you need to plan your day accordingly. As a professor, a major part of my job is to write research papers. Knowing that my peak performance is between 8am and 12pm, I make an effort to protect that time for writing. There are a few ways to protect your peak performance time. First, be mindful of what you schedule during those productive hours. For example, I try not to schedule non-research-related meetings during those times. You can also avoid spending those precious hours on simpler, less cognitively demanding tasks or less important tasks. In other words, don’t waste those precious productive hours on easy or unimportant tasks, save those for another part of the day!
Focus on high-impact tasks
I love a to-do list as much as the next girl… I’ve even been guilty of writing things down on my list simply so that I can have the pleasure of checking them off. However, I’ve learned that I’m more productive with a simpler, more straightforward list.
Think about it, when you put 100 things on your to-do list, how does it make you feel each time you look at it? You likely feel overwhelmed by the number of things you “need” to do (i.e., the items that aren’t crossed off). You might even feel like a failure because that huge list is “proof” that you’re not cutting it; that you’re not productive. An elegantly balanced women loves herself enough to not put herself through that.
So, what do we do instead? I have found that listing out 3 priorities that I have each day is much more impactful (and much kinder to myself). These priorities should be high-impact tasks that will move you closer to your goals. The two cornerstones of elegance are simplicity and effectiveness. Our priority list should reflect our commitment to elegance. It’s simple because there are only three things on it and it’s effective because we’ve chosen high-impact tasks that actually move the needle. Once you’ve listed them out, try to tackle the most difficult one first. And of course, tackle it during your peak productivity time that you previously identified.
Recognize Diminishing Returns
Finally, and possibly the most important adjustment you can make to your workday is to recognize diminishing returns. Diminishing returns can be defined as proportionally smaller benefits derived from something as more energy is invested in it. We are striving for a workday that we can move through with ease. Yet, I see so many women working outside of their peak productivity time to finish a specific task or cross something off their list. And yet, if they would just put it down and walk away for awhile (maybe even until tomorrow’s peak productivity time) they could complete it in half, or even a quarter of the time.
Time is one of our most valuable resources. We only get 24 hours each day. It doesn’t make sense to waste that precious time pushing through a project when you could complete it with greater ease at a different time of day or later in the week. Now, I recognize that sometimes we must work outside of our peak productivity times and that deadlines are a reality that must be dealt with. But, in general, staying in-tune with yourself and recognizing when you’ve hit a wall can not only open time to do things that bring you more joy but can also allow for better work when you do come back to it.
It’s okay to put the project down and take a walk outside, take a nap, shift to a different task, go get lunch, exercise. Whatever brings your joy and allows you to recharge and stop wasting your time on something that is getting diminishing returns.
When you make these three adjustments to your workday – identifying when you work best, focusing on high-impact tasks, and recognizing diminishing returns – you will be able to move through your day with greater ease, with greater elegance.
If you’re interested in creating a work-life balance characterized by simplicity, joy, and beauty, why don’t you start by checking out my Elegant Balance Workbook? In it, I help you define what work-life balance looks like for you and share some tips on creating that balance. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it – Balance doesn’t happen by accident.