Work/Life Balance

When my dad was young, he drove a big dump truck at a quarry hauling around...I don’t know...rocks? So, when I graduated college and entered the workforce myself, he offered me some advice:

Set your own terms.

When I asked him what that meant, he cited what long-ago lured him into the rock-hauling game: “flexibility”. His boss told him he could work when he wanted, how he wanted, with no clock to punch in or out. He just needed to move a certain amount of rock, which sounded cool to him, so he jumped in. And hated it. He burned out fast. But why? My dad was a hard worker and the job was flexible. So what happened?

The way he put it, “they let me choose which 16 hours a day I could work”.

The recent shift to hybrid remote work reminded me of my dad. All of us started working from home, with unlimited flexibility to work when and how we wanted and, well, you know the rest.

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I’ve spent years thinking about work/life balance. Each time I dive into the topic, I’m led to the same fundamental question:

“What am I trying to get out of my short time on Earth?”

Life should be a lush tapestry that weaves together satisfying work, a stimulating set of hobbies, and enough time to relax and recharge with the ones we love most. I’m happiest when these things work in harmony, one element breathing energy into another.

On the flip side, when this trinity falls out of balance, I find myself depressed and aloof. If one element toxically dominates, it suffocates the others. My attention span shortens, my patience wanes, and my wellbeing suffers. I pay the toll mentally, even if I don’t consciously recognize it. Imbalance takes away agency over my time and attention. Perhaps others are demanding too much from me. Perhaps I overcommit myself, causing my own problems. Oftentimes it’s a combination of both, or something else entirely.

As it turns out, I’m not alone. The Harvard Business Review calls work/life balance “a cycle, not an achievement ”. Much like healthy diet and exercise are habits to sustain your physical health, a constant practice of maintaining work/life harmony is critical for your mental health.

But we work in a fast paced, stressful industry. What can we do?

It’s not enough to simply take time off (though it’s important to take that). Time away is a great way to recharge, but if you come back to work and immediately feel off balance, the toxic cycle starts anew.

I’ve spent the last few months studying this topic (if you’re interested, I highly encourage you to read the work of Cal Newport ). Any organization that gets this right follows a similar pattern of solutions.

The most effective means to balance work and life center around one thing: building intention. To do this, I’ve discovered two categories of solutions: taking control of your day and taking control of your attention.

With the right structure in place, you can inhibit randomizations from others, break toxic, dominant blocks of your time, and build a healthy habit of harmony across the most important elements of your life.

In other words, life is short and there are ways to intentionally live it. Take back control.

The following document describes how I do it, and I hope by reading it you discover methods you can put into practice today. Like with any advice, pick up the pieces that resonate with you and leave behind the ones that don’t. Let’s dive in.

Part 1: Take control of your day

Work “commute” when there’s no commute

In the before times, we all commuted into the office. Some of us walked, others biked, bussed, or drove. We all had this membrane of time neither at home nor at work. This was a threshold we could use to read, listen to podcasts, or just take that glorious 20 minutes to do nothing at all but move through it.

Then the world stopped spinning. We all started WFH, which, at first, seemed like the pinnacle of comfort. We were free and flexible to work when we want, how we want! Free enough to even work at night! Or through lunch! Or, boy howdy, on the weekend! Free to raise our children while we took shiproom and meet the contractor at the front door while our boss ping’d us for an update. Free to break tens of thousands of years of human evolution and learn to communicate through avatars and videos.

And while using Microsoft Teams was successful in easing this disassociation, the change still fragmented our attention and sense of place. Psychologically, we stopped crossing the membrane from home to work. We were in limbo, a perpetual mix of the two.

But there’s hope. One of the easiest ways to remedy this is to set a “home time” in your calendar. You can go so far as to block off your entire morning (i.e., < 8a) and evening (i.e., >6p). Or you can decide to simply block off a half hour, your old commute time, during the time you would have normally been in transit (i.e., 8-830a, 530-6p).

The key is to do it, and when you do, set that time to “Out of office” so others are more likely to respect it.

Note: Of course, if you frequently work across time zones, you’ll need to accommodate for this. I have some recommendations for this later in the document.

Now you might be saying: “Joey, this is silly. There’s no way I can feel like my work is done at a set time, even when I’ve hit my commute block.” Patience, you! I’ll have an answer shortly. But first, lunch.

Lunch is the best part of the day

This section is short. I’m not going to try and sell you the concept of “lunch”. If you breeze through this meal, you should eat better food. As human beings, eating is precious, a fundamental joy. And, in my estimation, lunch is the best part of the day. I highly encourage you to give yourself at least a half hour to take it. In fact, much like weekends and time off, this is something you’re legally entitled to ! People fought for this right!

More than that, studies back up the psychological importance of this time. Remote work combined with back-to-back meeting culture means foregoing breaks can be hard to avoid. But taking real lunch breaks has been linked to improved job satisfaction and productivity. You’ll feel less randomized and have time to think, not respond.

It’s important, it makes every day better. Mark 12-1230 as “busy”. People will schedule fewer meetings at that time.

There’s time for you and me both: triage vs focus zones

OK, so you’ve blocked off time to not work. But what about when you need to?

Building a simple classification in your schedule pays dividends. In essence, I’m talking about segmenting your day into two categories of time rather than attempting to mix them both at all times:

1.??????Triage time is for parsing through incoming messages, emails, and schedule requests. You’re responding and intaking things to do during the next category.

2.??????Focus time is for creation. You’re not checking messages or emails; you’re going through your list of stuff to get to and you’re knocking this stuff off. If someone sends a message, you ignore it (more on that later, in the topic about notifications). 99% of the time, that message can wait. Your brain might think each message is urgent, and that is the fault of how technology was built to facilitate addiction. Rise above that feeling during this time.

Your schedule should look like this:

TRIAGE TIME --- FOCUS TIME --- LUNCH --- FOCUS TIME --- TRIAGE TIME

Rather than:

TRIAGE-FOCUS-TRIAGE-FOC – ?? NO, TRIAGE, NOW! ??-TRIAGE-FOCUS-INHALE FOOD-TRIAGE…etc.

One method to achieve this structure is following the pomodoro technique , which might work for you, but I found it too rigid for my tastes. I had to bail on the plan too often to properly utilize it.

Instead, I once again use the source of truth in my life - my calendar.

For me, the mornings are about triage, the middle of the day is for focus and meetings, and the end is triaging tomorrow.

To give myself an achievable goal and allow myself to stop at the end of the day, I follow one principle: The Glocke Guarantee?. This is a promise to triage every new message older than 1 working day and every new email older than 7 working days. If I can do that and clear my task list, I consider it a job well done. (There will be a whole section on task management coming up. For now, just think of it as a simple list with one killer feature for triaging and sanity.)

With this in mind, my typical schedule is:

-?????????8ish-9: Morning triage, where I go through all messages from yesterday and all emails from last week on the same day (i.e. if it’s Monday, go through last Monday’s emails). Either respond immediately or mark a message/email for follow-up in my task list and let the person know I’m following up.

-?????????9-12: Focus time, where I knock off items in my day’s task list and/or attend meetings. I’m ignoring new messages during this time.

-?????????12-1: Take lunch.

-?????????1-4: More focus time, knocking off more items and/or attending meetings. I’m ignoring new messages during this time.

-?????????4-5ish: Evening triage, where I respond to this day’s messages as well as ensure I get through all remaining messages from yesterday and emails from 7 days ago and older (The Glocke Guarantee?). There will always be a set of today’s messages and this week’s emails that can wait for tomorrow’s morning triage. Then, after all this is done, I triage tomorrow’s calendar by accepting/rejecting tentative timeslots and blocking off open blocks for dedicated focus time as much as I can.

-?????????5ish-onward: I’m done if I’ve satisfied The Glocke Guarantee? and my task list is empty. (More to come on figuring out how to do that.)

This system isn’t perfect, but attempting the structure goes a long way to avoiding disruption. I highly encourage you to tweak this and make your own system.

Huge giant note about everything I said above!

This system works for me, so I’m sharing it. But everyone thinks differently. Take my advice, hang on to the pieces that resonate, and reject those that don’t.

For instance, my colleague Ajit shared a great perspective on how he views time management:

To me, a key aspect of time management is "being goal oriented".

With OKRs keeping us focused, it should be relatively easier to spend bulk of our energies in-line with the organizational OKRs. In other words, if it’s not a key goal, it is clearly not a top priority.

Setting them upfront and having a regular discussion with your manager about them can help you avoid a ton of distractions - resulting in better time management.

So, my point is: think about it! Spend some time absorbing the way your peers organize their time, find what works for you, and try it. Spending cycles on self-care to create this intention is the point. One system is not inherently better than the other. People’s minds work differently.

We span the globe: time zone empathy

I want to mention a short caveat to everything I said above: we’re a collaborative, global world. So, as you structure your schedule, have empathy for your teammates that work in other time zones. It means that some days you’ll need to bend on the rigidity I championed above.

I find this to be a lovely human exercise. Reach out, agree on a particular day or time (early morning, late evening, perhaps alternating) that works for everyone, and stick to it.

In a previous life, I worked with a team from Israel over the course of a few years. The first thing we did was find time to travel there, get to know the folks in person, and empathize with them at a human level. (Grab a drink at Raisa if you ever find yourself in Tel Aviv.) I hope we can all go back to doing this practice soon, because after we met, everything about this challenge became easier.

Once we returned from our trip, we all agreed that fewer meetings would be better. This is the case in general, but especially so when superfluous meetings cause someone to wake up early or give up an evening. This means I pay more attention to written material during global projects. Every spec, decision, and open issue should be plainly documented. That doc should be reviewed, referred to, and agreed upon. Only when this communication breaks down (i.e., some partners become non-responsive) should a meeting be necessary.

And when a meeting is necessary, there are tools out there to help. For a recurring meeting (and I try to keep it to one at most), I communicate with stakeholders to agree on a time. For ad hoc meetings, I’ve used timezone.io to success in the past.

Part 2: Take control of your attention

Turn off notifications

Dopamine is created in your brain and plays a key role in all sorts of brain functions, including thinking, moving, sleeping, mood, attention, motivation, seeking and reward. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of goal-directed behavior.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps you motivated to move through your world, learn, and survive. In fact, this system is so strong you tend to seek more than you are satisfied with. Evolution again — seeking is more likely to keep you alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor.

In 2021, equipped with the internet, you can find instant gratification for this desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a message and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Wikipedia knows everything that has ever happened. Want to see what your friends are up to? Social media lets you check out but you can never leave.

It's easy to get in a dopamine-induced loop. Dopamine starts you seeking, then you get rewarded for the seeking, which makes you seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop checking email, texting, or scrolling. You’ve become Pavlov’s dog . Woof.

Tech companies use push notifications to leverage this innate human trait. Software is designed to spike dopamine and cause stress. This stress snaps you out of what you were otherwise doing and places your attention where they want it – their app.

So what agency, if any, does technology leave us?

The best thing you can do is disable everything that demands your attention when you don’t need to pay attention to it.

Note: If you want to learn more about this topic, check out the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

Research backs this up. Doctors behaviorally treat anxiety by recommending you disable notifications on your devices.

The only notifications active in my life are calls and texts. Messaging apps, email and chat all have notifications disabled, especially on devices that I carry around in my pocket. I personally go so far as to disable desktop notifications as well.

That chat can wait when I’m working on something else. Control your time and energy.

Full disconnect, my time: how best to use no meeting Fridays

As of this writing, our org is trying “no meeting Fridays”. That intention is good, but we all know its faults. Other teams schedule meetings anyway. Members of our own team abuse the fact that people’s schedule is open and block off time. It can feel like it doesn’t work.

But there are tricks.

First and foremost, you should block your calendar off. Not just with an appointment that makes your status “Busy”, but with an appointment that makes you “Out of office”.

This makes it less likely for folks to schedule over your intended day of focus. It’ll still happen, just less frequently.

Second, truly consider whether a meeting is necessary or can wait for Monday. Everyone always believes their topic is so important it must be discussed tomorrow, so you’ll see invites roll in on Thursdays from people that found and need time on Fridays. I’m here to tell you that, more than any other day of the week, take a moment to consider the role and the urgency of this meeting. If it can wait, it should. Focus is important.

OK, let’s say you follow these tips and your Fridays become (largely) open. What do you do with them? I’ll expand more in my task management section below, but in general, you want to load up your task list. For me, that means 3-5 big meaty tasks and 3-5 smaller ones. This document was written in big Friday blocks. I play some focus music (the 1991 My Bloody Valentine album Loveless right now), peek at the clock, and crack away for a good hour. No notifications (see above), no meetings (see this section), and no distractions. I tell myself I get a reward at the top of the hour. Right now, I’m peeking and it’s 1:48p. At 2p, I’m going to go downstairs and make an espresso. Maybe scratch my dog and complain to my wife about so-and-so. Plan today’s happy hour with friends. Then, at ~2:15p or so, I’ll crack away at my next chunk.

Without a doubt, Fridays bring me the most sense of satisfaction. I feel great when I write, create, and build. I take the output of all this work and funnel it into next week’s conversations and meetings. Hey everyone! Take a look at this, tell me what you think. And the cycle repeats. But it’s a cycle built of intention – you must make it happen. If left unchecked, others will take it away from you.

Fridays are precious, don’t lose them.

Task management: declutter and hit the snooze with Todoist

Over the years I’ve built a system to organize the chaos of my job. On the surface, it’s a simple matter of utilizing a task app. But the one I’ve chosen has a killer feature that shapes my entire job – the snooze.

As I go through my day, I triage intakes and jot down notes. This is an exercise in assembling a list of things to do. This can be as simple as “send my boss that deck” or as complex as “write that spec” or “cross-team collab to kick off that project”.

In Todoist, this is simple. Hit the “+” button, write it down. You can classify tasks with colors, but I largely avoid that. I’m a simple man with simple tastes.

Now heres’ the killer piece of this software. The ability to swipe (or right-click) on a task and “snooze it” to a date. So, if my boss doesn’t need that deck until Tuesday, I might snooze my task until Monday. Then when Monday morning rolls around, it’s part of my list of things to get to. I spend every morning and evening triaging like this.

In the morning, I strip away the fat of my tasks to leave me with, at most, 10 things “to do” that day, which I use focus times to accomplish. 10 is an imperfect, broad brush of a number, but I try to keep to it to maintain sanity. I can usually do, or at least make progress on, 10 things. I can’t do 20 or 30 – that’s overwhelming. You should not feel overwhelmed by the mountain in front of you. You simply have to start walking.

I go about my day either finishing a task and marking it done or doing at least one piece of the task (I mentally call 15 minutes of work “a piece”), then snoozing it out to another day to pick it back up. You eat a whale one bite at a time.

Then, at the end of my day, I always finish by clearing my list. I either finish the task or snooze it out. When I snooze them out, I try to look at my upcoming days and space things out, so I don’t always overload tomorrow. So, I don’t put anything in a day that already has ~10 tasks, unless the task absolutely must be there that day.

I use this system for everything and it’s key to finding balance throughout my day.

To recap some practices from earlier, this leaves me with the following agenda, every day:?

-?????????Clear emails from 7 days ago (The Glocke Guarantee?)

-?????????Clear chat messages and channel post tags from yesterday (The Glocke Guarantee?)

-?????????As I clear these out, and during the day in meetings, I assemble follow ups and new ideas as tasks in my Todoist

-?????????During focus times, do those tasks

-?????????Snooze any remaining tasks at the end of the day, spacing them out so I don’t overload tomorrow

Not only does this system help me stay organized, but it also gives me a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day. If I cleared my list, and I actually completed ~5 of the tasks from the day, I feel like it was a job well done.

Huge giant note about everything I said above!

As above, this is my system, but others have shared interesting tweaks! In my colleague Ajit's words:

Instead of broken-down tasks, I write down my goals (and everything that needs to happen in achieving that goal comes automatically)

- If it takes <2 minutes, do it now (instead of marking it for later) - you'll have less anxiety looking at growing list of Todo's

- tackle the most important / challenging topic first thing in the morning (or afternoon/evening - whenever you ae most productive)

Another aspect is getting comfortable with "top 3-5 things for the day" and letting the other 75 things drop

My colleague Loki said something similar:

Every week I write down my "3 MITs" (three most important things) and that becomes my focus for the week. Everything else is secondary and I will be OK if they get 'dropped'. (Inspired by "put first things first" from "7 habits of highly effective people ".) If it takes less than 2 minutes, I'll just do it right away.

It helps me focus on what matters and cut through the noise of a hundred different asks. I've been doing this in OneNote, and you can go as far back as the very first week I joined Microsoft to see what my 3 MITs were for the week ??

And my colleague Guneet told me about a different pivot called “Eisenhover's matrix of task prioritization ”.

So, again, my point is: think about it! Spend some time absorbing the way your peers organize their work, find what works for you, and try it. Spending cycles on self-care to create this intention is the point. One system is not inherently better than the other. People’s minds work differently.

That's all

OK, that’s all I have. This guide isn’t meant to solve every problem that causes work/life balance. There is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot. I've worked at Microsoft for 9 years and have seen us make earnest steps toward improving this from the top down. So, I hope this guide helped you learn some patterns and tricks that I use.

To summarize, first and foremost, make sure you take time off. Recharge. In fact, start thinking about that next vacation right now.

Then, when you come back to work, fill your day with intention. Eat lunch. Stop work at the end of the day. Block precious time for focus. Agree to work across time zones with empathy. Turn off distracting notifications. Find a day to focus from morning to evening and honor it. Build your own system for task organization.

If you start a habit from all of that, I think you’ll find your mind begins to clear, day by day. This is balance. Some days will throw the whole thing off. That’s OK, don’t despair. It happens to all of us. Pick it back up tomorrow. Just remember you’re here for a reason. You’re good enough. Kill off that imposter syndrome .

If you structure your day with intention, you’ll start to feel that yourself. Your work will soar. And when it does, you’ll stop feeling the toxic elements creep into aspects of life you actually value. That’s balance.

Each of us should feel empowered to work with intention. When you need time away, or simply time to focus, you should take it. That time won’t come to you. There’s no “down time” around the corner. You must carve it out yourself.

When the day ends, and you’ve hit your commute time, critically examine your remaining messages, email, and tasks. If something can wait, let it wait. This will pay off in the long run.

If you want to chat with someone about this, reach out to me. I'd love to help.

Just not in my off hours. I’m living the rest of my life.

-- Joey?

P.S.

These days my dad is happily retired and driving an R.V. from park to park across America. The last time I checked, he hasn’t hauled any rocks in that rig.