Compartmentalizing Life: Managing Your Time

Have you ever felt like you needed to clone yourself to satisfy everyone and do everything you need to do and still have time for yourself? The demands on our time can be overwhelming sometimes and you wonder if you're up to it.

Our usual response to this, especially if you're a responsible person who just can't say no, is to overstretch ourselves and try to do everything. We stretch ourselves as far as we can go. What's the result? Big fail. You're so tired that you're snappy at work and you hate everyone. You weren't able to take your loved one out to dinner on her birthday. You missed attending your child's graduation. You get sick. You wonder what in heaven's name went wrong when you were trying so hard and you start resenting the whole world for not appreciating your efforts.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to over achieve and be a great wife/husband or partner, a wonderful mother, have a great career and have time with friends. But you have to compartmentalize your life so you can give each one its own space... and its own time. Nobody wants just pieces of you... and you can't be everything all at the same time!

When it's time to work, work as hard as you can. It's work time, finish what you need to do. When you go home, or when you're on a vacation, focus on your loved ones. Unless there's something really urgent at work, try to stop thinking about it and give your whole time and attention to your loved one or your family. When its me-time, enjoy whatever you're doing for your own pleasure.

What I've learned is that Life is not the cause of our stresses and pressures. We bring it on ourselves because we don't know how to manage our priorities. When we put compartments in our life, we define what our priority is at the moment 

and give it the attention it needs. Every aspect of our life is important. We can't say that our relationship is important, but not our work... we need to pay the bills. Nor is work more important than our family, they're the reason why we're working so hard. Our me-time is also important for our own sanity. Of course, their level of importance is not the same but they each deserve their own space and time in our life.

Compartments allow us to define work time, relationship time, family time and me-time. There will be no overlap that will cause resentments. Everyone will be happy. We won't need to get stressed because when we open a compartment, we know exactly what role we are playing at a given time. There's no confusion. There's no guilt that we are failing an expectation or neglecting someone. We know that when it's their compartment's turn, we'll give whatever it is the same focus and attention that is expected of us. When one compartment needs more attention sometimes, that's fine. But you have to compensate. Compartmentalizing doesn't mean that you'll stop sharing, or separate one from the other completely... what it means is that you'll intentionally control overlaps and keep it to a minimum, so one doesn't taint the other.

Life would be so much simpler to manage that way. You have more chances of succeeding in all aspects, which is better for your overall well-being.

No, you cannot open all compartments at once. We'll be going back to the same problem! It can only be opened one at a time. 

Did you miss the whole point of this article? Ok, go back to the top please. Maybe I blabbered too much.