Managing Your Work Load – Goals & Motivation

Let’s start by taking some time to reflect on the reasons why you want to manage your work load.

A very common reason for taking a long hard look at your work load is that we are more connected and more prone to burn out. Working 70 – 80 hours a week 48 weeks a year is simply unsustainable. In a study carried out by the American Psychological Association in 2007:

• One-third of Americans feel they are living with extreme stress
• About half of Americans (48%) feel that their stress has increased over the past five years
• Money and work are the leading causes of stress – mentioned by three quarters of Americans

Sound familiar?

With that in mind let’s look at setting some goals that will feed into the following steps. You will then need to refer back to these to help keep you motivated to stick to your strategy. Fold a piece of paper in half and write down three social or family activities that you have missed in the last twelve months. This might be because you had to work late / work at the weekend or was so exhausted from work that you couldn’t face venturing out.

Here are some typical examples:

1. A Good Friends Birthday Drinks
2. Catching Your Favourite Band Live
3. Taking Your Significant Other Away

Once you have these three items turn them into positive commitments. Then write them on the other half of the paper:

1. When my good friends ask me out I will go
2. When X band comes to town I will make sure to get tickets and see them
3. I will take my significant other away at least twice a year

Goals which involve friends (old and new), family & love ones should be the inspiration and motivation for being great at work. Financial rewards will naturally flow from being more productive and becoming better at what you do. Money should not be a goal in itself as once reached it you will find that satisfaction is short lived and that relationships genuinely improve your life.

Take this piece of paper write the date in the corner and then put it somewhere that you can look at every day. Once you’ve turned one of the missed opportunities into a realised activity put a big red tick next to it. It’s this piece of paper that you should refer to until each of your items has been ticked off and that your new more positive approach to life has some habits formed around them.

With goals set and written down you can move onto the next step in the process.