Opportunity lost

Let’s play ‘Opportunity Lost!’

Here we go a nice easy one to start. How would you like to spend your time?

Watching TV or playing with your kids?

Very good, now a slightly harder one.

Go to your daughter’s nativity play or finish that important report that has to go out today?

Tick Tock, tick tock. We need an answer please.

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In an ideal world you’d like balance. You want your career to progress whilst also spending quality time with your family.

Now to deal with the dilemma. If you take each decision on a case by case basis then it can lead to a massive headaches each time you need to make a choice.

An alternative is to draw up a set of rules for yourself and write them in stone so you can avoid continuously having to choose between family and work.

For example if you set yourself the iron clad rule that you will leave work at 5:30pm everyday and stick to it, it would change your productivity.

Suddenly you have a sense of urgency in your day.

You stop dawdling so much because you promised time with your family.

You find ways to streamline meetings or even get rid of them altogether because you want to see your daughter’s play.

You discover other ways to work and focus on being as productive as you can be because you’re doing this for your family.

Problem solving feeds off constraints.