A few years back, the issue of working from home came up at the office. At the time, there was a fairly firm policy in place that if you weren’t in the office and wanted to get paid, you used your paid time off.
But flexibility was quickly rising as an indispensable employee perk, and there were many reasons why we found the idea of working from home, even if it were only one day a week, appealing. For some of us, eliminating a grueling commute would be a welcome relief; for others, it was the ability to structure your day freely — who’d care if you got sweaty working out during lunchtime? As for me, I liked the thought of being able to work all day in pajamas.
This flexibility made it easier to achieve better work/life balance. Well, a new bill, the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017, promises even more flexibility to those who log overtime hours. If passed, the law would give employees the option of taking comp time at a rate of time-and-a-half for any overtime hours worked. So someone who’d worked 10 overtime hours would be able to take 15 hours of comp time. There are some caveats, which you can read about here, but all-in-all, it’s a win-win: Employers save on payroll, and employees can take the additional accrued time to spend as they’d like.
But all this talk of time as money and how flexibility helps with work/life balance made me think about how I spend my time. It seems there are never enough hours in the day to cross off everything on my to-do list. I mentioned this to a friend, and she immediately loaned me a copy of I Know How She Does It — How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time.
In it, author Laura Vanderkam studies how 133 successful and happy women — all of whom earned more than $100K a year and had at least one child under the age of 18 living with them — spent their time. She asked each to keep a detailed time log, in 15-minute intervals, for one week, amassing information on 1,001 days.
The results were surprising. While the book focuses on women, it’s really about time management, and as such, offers great tips and strategies for everyone. Here are a few of my favorites:
• Restructure time. Don’t think in blocks of 24-hour days. Trying to balance each and every day can be unrealistic and stressful. Instead, broaden your scope and focus on the 168 hours there are in a week. Subtract 40 hours for work and another 56 for sleep (if you sleep an average of 8 hours a night) and that leaves you with 72 hours for other things.
• Plan ahead. At the end of your work day, spend 10-15 minutes thinking about the next day. It’ll make you clear-minded and focused on what your challenges/goals are for the next morning. Additionally, do this on a weekly basis as well — a few minutes on Sunday night to reflect on the week to come will set you up for success.
• Be an early bird. A Johnson & Johnson study showed that our energy levels peak at around 8 a.m. Tackle your toughest work challenges in the quiet hours of early morning, when you’re fresh (and caffeinated).
• Learn how much time things take. Often, we have no idea exactly how much time it takes to perform certain daily tasks. Knowing this will help you be more efficient. Keeping a time log, where you record each hour of the day, can be an eye-opening experience. You can download a log and detailed instructions on the author’s website: lauravanderkam.com.
I have yet to begin my own time log but I’m already curious about what it might reveal. If you complete one, I’d love to share notes — drop me a line!