Finding the elusive work/life balance

Nearly everyone struggles to find a work/life balance—on top of the hassles of traffic to and from our home and our place of work.  Many self-help books are full of multitasking tips, but one of our resource persons believes that this is not beneficial.  And that businesses should, instead, concentrate on instructing their employees on effective workload management.

We interviewed Pia Cruz, an organizational development consultant and trainer, to find out more:

Why do we all need to learn workload management?

Effective workload management means more relevant work done.  High productivity is one of the strongest drivers to attaining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and eventually meeting overall business goals and strategies.

When companies emphasize and support employee productivity, they encourage a healthy culture of collaboration and integration, effective communication, decision-making, and high standards of performance.  In addition,  employees who effectively manage their professional workload are able to create more time to attend to their personal lives, resulting in a higher sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

Why don’t you believe in multitasking?

Multitasking is a myth and countless research has proven that it does NOT work.  Most of us are guilty of doing it several times. We have an illusion that we’re saving time and being more effective when we can work on on the computer while entertaining a client on the phone, discreetly answer e-mail in the middle of meetings, or simply text while driving.

In reality though, your brain does not really multitask.  It just reduces the attention from one task to shift and share it with the other.  You are productive only within the first few minutes of multitasking.  After that, your focus and productivity begin to drastically drop and errors occur. As much as 40 percent of productivity drops during multitasking.  Full concentration as well as enjoyment and appreciation of tasks cannot be done while multitasking.

Multitasking is therefore something we should all stop doing as it slows us down and diminishes quality of work.

You are an advocate of “Work smarter, not harder,” but how exactly can we do this?

There are many ways to “work smarter,” ranging from strategic techniques to simple tactics.  The aim of each is to enable us to produce quality work output in the most efficient way.

Some quick tips are:

Clarify your goals.  The first step in working smarter is to ensure our goals are crystal clear. Take time to look at accomplishing your work from different angles.  See what new approaches, resources, or technology may be available to you that will enable you to work faster while producing quality results.

Improve your skills.

Single-handle tasks. Do not go to the next task until you finish what you’re doing.

Delegate.  Determine which really have to be done by YOU and which can be delegated, shared, or outsourced.

Plan the resources you will need in order to work uninterruptedly.

Deliberately prevent distractions and manage interruptions.

Take breaks. Taking short breaks to recharge and refresh ourselves throughout the day will help maintain high levels of productivity. (The author is Executive Director of Inquirer Academy.)

Cruz will be conducting a workshop entitled “Effective Workload Management: Everyday Techniques to Get Things Done” on Oct. 12-13, 2016 at the Inquirer Academy.

For more information, e-mail [email protected], call (632) 8008110/771-2715 and look for Jerald Miguel, or visit the website at www.inquireracademy.com.