How to split up your day for a balanced life
There are 24 hours in a day.
They say to live a balanced life you should break up those hours into three equal parts:
- 8 hours to sleep
- 8 hours to work
- 8 hours to live your life
Divide and conquer, right?
Only, does it really work out that way?
8 hours to work
Wake up early in the morning to get to the ol' nine to five. Punch in at 8:55am, crack them knuckles and start to grind.
Now if you’re not going to steal time from your job, ‘cause boss man isn’t going to like that and you’ll be out of a job before you could sing Sixteen Tons
So you're going to want to spend that time effectively; getting things done.
As a side note, I've found that planning out my week in advance and minimizing distractions has helped me tremendously with my productivity.
One of the things that I’ve incorporated into my life is to turn off instant messages on my mobile phone, particularly WhatsApp. I have Slack messages from my work team and Key clients. Everybody else can call the business land line, fire an email or message the business on social media. If and when the message needs to reach me, it will.
This small hack has worked wonders for my productivity and I highly recommend you try it.
You can read about it here: WhatsApp notifications off... forever - by Alex Rourke
But yeah. The first set of 8 hours is used to earn money.
Let's see what else we have time for...
8 hours to live
Most people have a daily commute to and from work, so once you're off the clock, it's time to sit in your car and watch other frustrated people honk their horn and be rude to each other. Let’s say it’s an hour in each direction; if you’re lucky.
Let’s also say you eat three meals a day and take 1 hour for each. We’re down to 3 hours and you haven’t done shit!
You still have to…
- Help the kids with homework
- Do the groceries
- Work on your side hustle
- Do the dishes
- Clean the house
- Walk the dog
- Workout
- Read
- Learn some German
- Blog on @peakd
- Hang out with your friends and loved ones
And when are you supposed to get all that done?
8 hours to sleep
Like I said in the beginning, you’re supposed to get a full night’s sleep in order to have a balanced life, But since I didn’t have enough time to write my blog post during the day, I’ll do it right before bed.
Oh! also, I’ll try to write one last work email before I forget.
Oh and I think I'll have a nice cup of coffee to help me stay awake while I'm at it....
See what’s happening?
I start dipping into my 8-hour sleep bucket and without really noticing, it's getting lower and lower. And what happens when it starts to get really low?
I personally start to loose focus, my memory is not as sharp and I start to get moody. I start questioning my life decisions and feel sad for no reason. My mind also wanders and I find myself having to re read things or ask for further explanation on something I didn't quite catch.
But sleep depravation is believed to contribute to other long-term effects such as hypertension, depression and obesity.
The amount of hours you sleep affects your blood pressure and glucose levels. Sleep helps us repair blood vessels and our heart.
I'm already on blood pressure medication and I monitor my blood pressure a few times a day.
Could it be at all possible that being sleep deprived we are not coming up with our best business ideas and because we’re depressed we just - as the amazing and one of my favorite bands of all time, Pink Floyd put it in their song “Time” - hang on in quiet desperation? We don't bother working out and we brush off eating healthy food. We start getting fat and because we're depressed, we just accept it and keep reluctantly trudging along?
Something to think about, isn't it?
Give it some thought over the weekend and if you have a Life Calendar like I wrote about in my last blog post, you can make the plan to start improving your sleep routine on Monday. It's a fresh new week and a fresh opportunity to crush it.
Until then, have an amazing weekend.
Whatever you do, don't over do it, you don't want to be part of the rat race.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read my blog post. I'd love to read YOUR productivity hacks and ways which you make the most out of your life.
Sources:
https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep-deprivation/effects-on-body
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318605/
Image credits:
All images created using MidJourney.