Balance Work and Life |Time Management

There seems to be early burn-out in IT professionals.

Job pressure, peer pressure, management pressure – the stress is too much ‘burning the midnight oil’ used to be cited ion critical context. Today, it has become the order of the day. Procrastination or poor time management is the primary reason.

Working long hours isn’t productivity. In fact, it is to the contrary. Freeing up bandwidth to take up additional tasks makes a professional resourceful reflective of commitment and management.

Devotion to work should be willful otherwise its leaves one dissatisfied and disgruntled. Everything ought to be balanced – including work.

If you can’t get the work done in the given time, either the estimation is incorrect or the resource incompetent.’  People do tend to procrastinate.

The 40 hour week

 Any project manager with appreciable knowledge and experience will not estimate more than 8-hours in a day. Remember time is money and hence any inflation in your estimation will have an adverse implication on your cost estimation. So balancing the 40-hour and keeping the project within cost calls for a skilled and smart time management.

Performance and productivity

No matter how many hours you clock, its 4 hours spread across 8.  The body might be willing but the mind simply is not up to it. Exhaustion, fatigue leads to failure. Your ability to concentrate ebb s with passage of time. Sources from public domain cite that working fewer hours increase productivity and thereafter tend to wane.

Work-life balance

“I am too busy at work” is the usual refrain. You start before the kids awake and return after the fast asleep. Many professionals itinerary falls in to this pattern. Genuine cases of work chewing and even gobbling time is a possibility but that can’t become the norm. Its not family first or work at any cost. One has to strike a balance to do justice to both – stakeholder management.  And its important to attend on everyone, and if possible content.

 Work-life balance is not pitting work against family, as it is usually misunderstood. Work-life balance is giving your 100% wherever you are occupied – with family or work. 

image courtesy: goo.gl/8KkLyP