Buckets of life

Well, we get thrown buckets of shit sometimes.. I've had my fair share but today, I'm laying out new buckets to organise my life.

I mentioned that I am attending a class on managerial leadership. On the first class, lecturer opined that work-life balance was a misnomer. Instead, he carved life into seven buckets - family, friends, health, fun, spirituality, social responsibility, career - and assigned an ideal proportion to each of them, adding up eventually to 100%.

i carved my life into five buckets after that first class. My buckets are kind of balanced right now except for maybe health :p so I thought I would assign proportions closer to mid 2012 when I would have to return to full-time work.. But, oh well, let me just do it now!

Bucket	Ideal weight*	Hours per week
Family	35%	40 (mostly in the weekend)
Friends	9%	11 (dinner, games..)
Me time	9%	11 (read, internet, meditate)
Health	2%	2 (let's be honest!)
Work	45%	55 (some OT + travelling)

* Out of waking hours only, assuming seven hours of sleep

So there, my ideal looks good. I have half my time for non-work! That's some kind of a balanced life! :)

But lecturer also said that the unfortunate reality was that the actual proportions were often not as ideal. The gap between ideal and reality is something that we have to fix.

I have optimistically put work at 45%. I'll cap it at 50%, stealing time from me and friends where necessary. And if push comes to shove, 55%, max max MAX! I know it's a zero sum game. But I can be creative and overlap activities to make time count, e.g. sports with family and friends, inviting friends over for dinner with the family, watching drama while on the treadmill, read while babies nap..

Well, we'll know if this works comes mid 2012! *dreading it*