How Do I Balance My Personal and Professional Life?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - We got ourselves some questions here.

00:00:07.680 | First one comes from Agnes McGyver, awesome name.

00:00:12.520 | McGyver, do you watch McGyver?

00:00:15.560 | We're the generation.

00:00:17.040 | - I've seen it in the past, yeah, for sure.

00:00:18.960 | - Guy was awesome.

00:00:20.520 | So Agnes McGyver, which is I believe McGyver's aunt.

00:00:25.000 | I just said the name, like the aunt

00:00:27.560 | that sends him a birthday card.

00:00:30.440 | All right, Agnes McGyver says,

00:00:32.160 | I've been applying deep work concepts and time blocking

00:00:35.440 | to both my personal and professional life.

00:00:37.800 | I'm ambitious in both.

00:00:39.440 | Do you recommend creating a clearly defined separation

00:00:41.520 | between the two?

00:00:42.360 | Do I use two time block planners?

00:00:43.640 | I catch myself wanting to open a time block planner

00:00:45.640 | and plan out my personal life.

00:00:47.640 | Agnes, I usually recommend do not fully time block

00:00:50.800 | your personal life if you're also time blocking

00:00:53.560 | your professional life because it's too much structure.

00:00:57.200 | You will eventually burn out.

00:00:59.560 | Time blocking is very artificial.

00:01:01.240 | All right, so when you're time blocking,

00:01:03.360 | it's not like you are rolling with our natural instincts

00:01:06.880 | of humans about how we approach our time.

00:01:08.720 | It is an artificial solution to the artificial load

00:01:11.520 | of diverse work tasks that we get poured on our plate.

00:01:14.320 | So it's not easy to do, but it works.

00:01:17.200 | It gets a lot done.

00:01:18.360 | It keeps things in control.

00:01:19.520 | It allows us to survive the deluge of tasks

00:01:21.960 | that's thrown at us in the modern work situation.

00:01:25.040 | In a perfect, slow productivity enriched world,

00:01:27.160 | you might not need time blocking at all,

00:01:28.800 | but we need it today.

00:01:30.000 | But you don't wanna do something so difficult

00:01:31.920 | and so unnatural in every waking hour

00:01:33.760 | you are gonna burn out.

00:01:35.080 | So go lighter in your personal time.

00:01:38.480 | I often just recommend sketching a plan.

00:01:40.760 | End of the day, it's the evening.

00:01:42.040 | What's going on?

00:01:43.400 | Well, is there any time specific things

00:01:46.160 | we need to remember?

00:01:47.000 | Let me jot that down.

00:01:47.840 | We're going to dinner.

00:01:48.880 | I have to pick something up from the store.

00:01:51.160 | And then you sketch out other things you wanna get done.

00:01:53.440 | Here's my plan for tonight.

00:01:54.480 | I wanna get some reading in later.

00:01:55.720 | I wanna watch this show.

00:01:57.400 | You kind of figure out a reasonable plan.

00:01:58.920 | You kind of jot it down.

00:01:59.840 | It's not planning out every minute.

00:02:01.760 | Here's the things that have to happen.

00:02:03.000 | Here's some things I wanna get done.

00:02:04.160 | Rough plan, do your best.

00:02:06.200 | Same thing for weekends.

00:02:07.480 | Well, I'm gonna go,

00:02:08.320 | we're going on this trip for most of Saturday,

00:02:10.200 | but I wanna get a walk in before.

00:02:12.040 | You're just sketching out a plan.

00:02:14.480 | So it's not a full-time block plan,

00:02:16.440 | but it's not just winging it.

00:02:17.720 | It's somewhere in between.

00:02:18.920 | I think that's probably the right balance between the two.

00:02:22.000 | (upbeat music)

00:02:24.600 | [MUSIC]

How Do I Balance My Personal and Professional Life?

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