It’s 7pm and you’re still in the office. You’re not going to make it home for dinner and you’re working away in the hopes that your efforts will bolster your career. There is, of course, merit in working hard but is it necessary to sacrifice your personal life to achieve professional success? Not so, according to business consultant and author, Justin Bariso.
After hours image from Shutterstock
In a blog post, Bariso noted that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, one of the world’s most prominent figures in business, leaves work at 5.30pm on the dot so she can have dinner with her family. You can sink hours and hours into your job and there will always be work to be done, but highly successful people tend to think through their personal and professional priorities, allocating time for each of them. They then stick to the allotted times.
Bariso said:
For you, quitting time might be 5:00. Or maybe it’s 6:30. What really matters is that you pick a time and stick with it.
To do this, you should treat your personal priorities like a doctor’s appointment that cannot be missed. It’s important to have a healthy work-life balance, especially as we kick off the New Year and people start returning to work after the holiday break. It may not always be possible to have a perfect work-life balance (and that’s okay) but you have to bear in mind that working longer doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being more productive. Leaving work at a decent hour to decompress is valuable for creativity and managing stress.
[Via LinkedIn Pulse Blog]
Comments
2 responses to “Treat Personal Priorities After Work Like Non-Negotiable Appointments”
One thing iv found working in a higher level position in IT is that no amount of planning and organizing can prepare you for an outage in a 24/7 business.
Since starting in IT I have had to organize my life around work because of its unpredictable nature that can not be ignored.
But its the job I signed up for and if you dont accept it you wont last long
In my experience people that put in stupid hours all the time are stupid. If you can’t manage incoming workload you aren’t effective. The old adage “Work smarter, not harder” is true. Some of the dopes working the extra hours aren’t even doing it because they are required to. To get head you have to do the right work well for the right people. Not slave away like a drone. Also booking our your own time in your calendar is a must.