You take some action and then put the family affairs back on track. After a while, you notice that you’ve been neglecting another area, say, your family. It goes like this: You unconsciously start paying too much attention to one aspect of your life, say, your work. The easiest - and unfortunately the most common - way to make these decisions is by what I call neglect-based prioritizing. When we break down these high-level areas into discrete tasks, it’s too easy to forget what they’re really about and make bad prioritization decisions as a result. It’s obvious we need to pay attention to both, and so it is with all key areas of our lives.īut here lies the conundrum: although we can’t properly choose between health and family, in any given moment we may need to choose between their tangible equivalents ‘go to gym’ and ‘call mom’. The usual notion of prioritizing - choosing one thing over another - doesn’t make much sense here. Its silliness lies in the fact that we know that both health and family are important and that both need attention. What’s more important to you: health or family?Īll right, we know that that question doesn’t make any sense. It closes the gap between the high-level world of areas of responsibility and major goals, and the down-to-earth world of tasks and external demands.Īs a bonus, the time budget also helps you effectively deal with many productivity killers such as lack of focus, procrastination and perfectionism - all in one fell swoop.Ĭonsider the following question. The time budget is a practical method you can use every day to keep your life always in balance.

Time budget app