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How I Balance Home & Kids & Home Office & Myself…
By Jeff Zbar | October 13, 2008
No one said balancing work and life would be easy. Heck, I don’t recall my parents ever using the word “balance” in any discussion of adulthood at all. Like a bird feeding her chicks or a dolphin training her calf to hunt, some things just happen.
It seems to be that way sometimes in the home — and home office. The fine art of organization was never a course I saw over four years on my college syllibi. Yet you get out into the workplace, and — Voila! — organization is a strategy you’re either expected to know, or it becomes a practice you’d better pick up in short order.
I recall being a college junior and the editor of a student-produced monthly magazine. I quickly realized that my haphazard techniques of scribbling to-dos on scraps of paper would not cut it. So I bought a Day-Timer and began keeping pretty thorough notes on articles and assignments, deadlines and details, and all the stuff that made the magazing run.
Know what? Those habits found their way into my school life, and later, my professional life post-college, and my daily life. Today, they’re no longer on paper but details in the digital tools I use to keep myself organized (Google Calendar, mostly).
But while the tools have changed, the strategies have stayed the same. Yet one thing that’s changed with the ages is how or whether my kids pick up tips on balance on their own. We’ve tried to instill in them good organizational skills, and schools give out “Agenda” booklets for them to keep notes about homework, assignments and tests.
Then there’s the innate nature of organization. It sometimes just seems to get done — like birds learning to feed their young, or dolphins learning to hunt…
ShareTopics: Personal Organizing |