As Ya See It

An Entry-Level Guide to Independent Post-College Life

How to Balance Work and Life

These past few days, I have explored the idea of a work-life balance. Starting out in the career world, I find it difficult to balance out my life and create time for things other than work. Working 9-to-5s (we all know how grueling that can be) is no easy task - especially after you realize that the caffeine is no longer kicking in after your third pumpkin latte. So how do the big scary adults have time for work, family, football, and sleep? They’re not human. Just kidding, they are. You just have to block out your time. I know, it’s back to the days of the File-o-Fax. Separate your free time on weekdays into blocks:

9:00 AM - 5:00 PM: Work

5:00 PM - 6:00ish PM: Drive home

6:00 PM - 6:30 PM: Idle computer time

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM: Chill with the homies

8:30 - 9:30: Lifting weight for the ladies

9:30 - 10:00: Idle computer time

Anyway… You get the picture. If you block out your time, you don’t get overwhelmed by the commitments you have after work AND you actually get stuff done! But don’t worry, no one said that you can’t be a couch potato every once in a while because what’s the fun in that?

First lesson of adulthood: Divide and conquer. Brought to you by my good friend, Anna. And now for the back-story… Anna’s younger sister came to visit us at the end of our senior year in college, so we had to drop her off at the airport on her last day. On the ride back, Anna and I got an insane craving for donuts - the type of craving that makes you come to a screeching accident-causing halt in the middle of the road because you just can’t beat it. Needless to say, wehadto pull over at Dunkin Donuts to get a dozen donuts for all of our friends (and, of course, some for ourselves). Being college seniors, we were also insanely exhausted and wanted to sleep by the time we got back to the suite (it was still too early in the morning to remain awake). So, before going to bed we staked out our doughnut territory. Anna got the jelly doughnut and I got the glazed, naturally. And then we went off into dreamland for a few more hours. In retrospect, we probably looked like a bunch of idiots because we wrote all over a doughnut box, but it got the job done. We told people what belonged to each of us and which of the doughnuts people could take. Surprisingly, none of our friends messed with our plan. We successfully divided and conquered. When presented with a task, stake out your boundaries. How far are you willing to go? What are you not comfortable doing? Divide the task into small reachable goals and then proceed to fulfill each of them separately. Conquer.

First lesson of adulthood: Divide and conquer. Brought to you by my good friend, Anna.

And now for the back-story… Anna’s younger sister came to visit us at the end of our senior year in college, so we had to drop her off at the airport on her last day. On the ride back, Anna and I got an insane craving for donuts - the type of craving that makes you come to a screeching accident-causing halt in the middle of the road because you just can’t beat it. Needless to say, wehadto pull over at Dunkin Donuts to get a dozen donuts for all of our friends (and, of course, some for ourselves).

Being college seniors, we were also insanely exhausted and wanted to sleep by the time we got back to the suite (it was still too early in the morning to remain awake). So, before going to bed we staked out our doughnut territory. Anna got the jelly doughnut and I got the glazed, naturally. And then we went off into dreamland for a few more hours.

In retrospect, we probably looked like a bunch of idiots because we wrote all over a doughnut box, but it got the job done. We told people what belonged to each of us and which of the doughnuts people could take. Surprisingly, none of our friends messed with our plan. We successfully divided and conquered.

When presented with a task, stake out your boundaries. How far are you willing to go? What are you not comfortable doing? Divide the task into small reachable goals and then proceed to fulfill each of them separately. Conquer.