Brian Tracy argues work-life balance is about choices, not equal time. He says people waste roughly 50% of work hours on email and social media, then offers three fixes: use positive affirmations, visualize yourself working productively, and actually work while at work by limiting socializing.
Questions this video answers
June 7, 2016.
50% (reported from 'time and motion videotape of workplaces').
About three and a half hours per day.
Around 37% of the average day.
If you spend more than 10% of your time socializing, your time is out of control.
Chapters
There are no shortcuts. To be a big success, start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and today we're going to talk about a big subject, one that everyone seems to struggle with and it's called work life balance. The first thing to understand about work life balance is, is that most people have the wrong idea of what that actually means. They think that their whole life should be balanced. They think they should have a little bit of work and a little bit of play and a little bit of time on the weekends in order to improve the quality of their lives. When thinking about your quality of life, you have to ask yourself, what do you really want to do with your life? A great question. If the answer is that you want to be really successful in your career, then you have to start a little earlier, you have to work a little harder, and you have to work a little later. Here's an interesting discovery. Almost all really successful people work six days a week. Average people work 40, maybe even 30 hours. Poor people work 20 or 10 or no hours at all. Now, aside from actual time spent at work, the real problem comes down to what you accomplish, why you're at work. It's astonishing, but most people spend 50% of their time. According to the statistics time and motion videotape of workplaces, they spend 50% of their time doing non work related activities while they're in the office or at their place of work. They engage in things like social media, checking email. By the way, social media and checking email are up to about three and a half hours a day for the average working person. Today they take long lunch breaks. They just kind of fudge. It's got 60 minutes for lunch, but they take 80. And chatting with co workers, that takes up about 37% of the average day is spent chatting with co workers on subjects that have nothing to do with the work. These are all examples of time wasting behaviors that people actually slip into mostly unconsciously. If you ask people, do you waste a lot of time at work? They'll say, absolutely not. I work hard, hard, hard all day long. You say, well, we've been videotaping you today, so let's run back the videos and take a look. And whenever they do this, a person watching the video is absolutely shocked at how much time they waste. They call this invisible time wastage. As far as the person is concerned, it's invisible. So you get into the habit of this sort of thing, by the way, making it hard to get all of your work done and have time to focus on the other aspects of your life. Here's the key to achieving work life balance. Choose to manage your time. Choosing to manage your time effectively is the starting point of overcoming previous programming and eliminating mental blocks to time management. You. You must decide right here and now to become an expert in time management in order to improve your quality of life. Your aim should be to manage your time so well that people admire you and look to you as a role model for their own work habits. Think about that. Here are four tips for time management that will help you to achieve a work life balance. Improve your quality of life 1. Use the power of positive affirmations Positive affirmations, or what they call positive self talk, are commands that you pass from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind that you either say out loud or say to yourself with emotion and enthusiasm to drive the words into your subconscious mind. Sort of like a pile driver. It's sort of like instructing yourself to follow new operating instructions. Begin by repeating positive affirmations over and over to yourself, such as I am excellent at time management, I am excellent at time management, or I already have a balanced work and life. My favorite time management affirmation is I use my time well. I use my time well. I use my time well. Just say that over and over. When you repeat positive affirmations over and over, they are eventually accepted by your subconscious mind as commands just like you've programmed it. And then you'll find that your external behaviors on the outside will start to reflect your new internal programming. We say as within so without tip 2 in managing your time and achieving work life balance, if there is such a thing, is to visualize your time management skills. Mental pictures almost immediately influence your subconscious mind, so begin to see yourself as well organized and efficient and effective in time management. We say mentally fake it before you make it so. Recall and recreate memories and pictures of yourself when you were performing at your best and getting through enormous amounts of work. Through positive affirmations, you can create a picture of the upcoming event and see it unfolding perfectly in every respect. See yourself as calm, positive, happy and in complete control. See the other people doing and saying exactly what you would want them to do if the situation was perfect. Play this picture of yourself over and over again on the screen of your mind. Tip number three is take action based on your visualizations. Now that you have concentrated on and visualized what your day and your future will look like with proper time management, it's time for you to put it into action you do this by working the entire time you're at work. When you walk into the office, you should work the entire time you're there. Be pleasant and friendly to your co workers, but get to work right away and work until you are finished. Peter Drucker says that if you spend more than 10% of your time spent socializing, your time is out of control. By doing this going straight to work, you'll get on top of your work and will walk away feeling accomplished. At the end of your day, when you don't have lingering tasks to worry about, since you will have worked as hard as you could have during your time in the office, you'll be left with plenty of quality time to spend with your friends and family after work. Before we wrap up, I'd like to leave you with a thought to share with your friends and followers. There are no shortcuts to be a big success. Start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. Those are my Strategies for Achieving Work Life Balance if you haven't seen my other videos about building your career and improving your position in life, take a look now. I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is what does work life balance mean to you and what strategies have worked for you in achieving it? Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. For more resources on how to improve your quality of life, Visit my website, www.briantracy.com. thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable for teaching you how to achieve work life balance, subscribe to my channel and share this video with your friends or anyone else who might benefit from this information.
