Aligning purpose with work and passion
Read how you could solve the dilemma of handling an infinite number of projects by wisely allocating your work time and get aligned with your core values and purpose along the way.
Hassled with an overwhelming load of work?
Are you working on more than five projects and do you struggle with allocating time the right way? When working on ten projects, or even more, I find it very hard to prioritise the right projects and hassle with getting my work-time allocated the right way. My challenges are to distribute time the way I want, productivity, motivation and wasting my precious hours, especially in times of an increasing number of simultaneous projects. Not only I found it difficult to allocate my time but deciding what projects do I actually drop and which ones shall I prefer and go further with or are worth putting more time in?
Figuring out and developing a system to handle the vast amount of work was the general aim I had in mind. Making informed decisions, set the right priorities, apply a round-robin system to master my messy work week. If that sounds appealing or if you struggle with a similar situation you might find this article helpful and it has the potential to make your life easier.
Listing all my projects and tasks was the first step I took. This way it is displayed and you can easily visualise what you are working on. If it is only in your head, you’ll never be able to see the bigger picture, writing it down helps to figure out what’s at stake. I was not able to pronounce all my work by heart before, but seeing it clearly in front of me sparked a realisation. Maybe I even forgot one or two things but it provides me with a clear picture of what is going on.

Once the list of items is defined, I added a column by the name of hours per week spent and wrote the working hours besides each item I have spent working on, based on the previous week. Although this is rather a rough estimation it is a great indication and can be refined over time. Basically, you get a hint how much you have worked on each topic and you’ll be able to calculate the percentage of each item you are working on. I compared the hours spend to the hours of a standard work week of 42 hours. This way you will not only see the share of each item expressed in percent but also you will find out how much overtime you spend in comparison to a standard work week — this might be a very revealing moment.
After I added the hours- and the percentage column I added another column to write the percentage (or time) I am really willing to put at stake on each item and look at the delta compared to what I have actually spent (the difference between the two values). Comparing what I have spent on each item against what I am willing to spend on each of the items was a very important and insightful step for me. This will reveal the discrepancies and you’ll be able to find out what is going wrong and thus you’ll have the chance to amend and correct the allocated time (or size of share) to your comfort. I also created a Pie-Chart based on the percentage of data to visualize the size of each item in the entire work spectrum. The pie chart indicates a round-robin scheduling cycle, which means basically that you have only a finite amount of time you can spend, thus you want to make sure the important tasks and projects don’t fall short.

Seeing this visually also explained the lack of motivation and inspiration I have had towards some of the tasks, simply because some of them took over the lion’s share of my work week, although they have been tasks or projects I don’t particularly like and neither they represented my core values.
There is a sheer amount of tools you can use to further refine and fine-tune your recordings, gathering data and make predictions on the topics as elaborated above. Evernote, Toggle or Rescue Time, Freemind and project managers like Asana are a few tools I want to mention. Check out this blog, if you want to learn more about the tools. One recommendation I would like to make, if you allow me so, the simpler it is the better you can focus on what is important. You may be happy to put 5 to 10 minutes per day to reflect on what you have done and how long you spent time with a particular task or project and journalise it in a spread-sheet.
Cycle of Success, is an article I wrote about how to enhance productivity, the tools and techniques explained might be beneficiary for you and you may find them useful implementing in your daily routines.
Digging one level deeper
Having a thorough look at the projects I am working on was an important step forward but it shows only a simplistic or partial view of the entire picture. I came across the book with the title “Life on Purpose” by Victor J. Strecher, who explains that you’ll find your purpose by addressing and looking at your values and topics you either like or cherish and by digging thoroughly into them. Combining the learnings of the book and the project list above, I was able to allocate the right priorities to the projects and tasks I am currently working on.
My purpose is to help others create a purpose in their lives, to teach every student as if they were my own daughter, to be an engaged husband and father, and to enjoy love and beauty. VICTOR J. STRECHER
By addressing your core values, and defining your purpose you will gain the confidence and insight, that some topics are very important and support your values and purpose, therefore you’ll be able to adjust the priority and amount of time you want to spend on particular items of your list or where you want to reduce time and priority accordingly. Even to say NO or to dumping a project might conclude after a thorough revision under the light of purpose and values. It is far easier to have such a rigid system where you define what you prefer or favour and then apply informed decision making. It becomes easier to accept or decline, once you understand what keeps you going. You can allow your core values to form a grid or framework where you can refer to and make decisions based on the framework.
Contrarily to this framework is the impulsive decision making where you look at the importance of tasks based on your current feeling and inclination towards a particular task or project and that might be different on another day of the week because your feelings have changed or other circumstances influence and mess with you.

Currently, I am in the process of reading, learning and applying the content of the book to create my value framework. Once that is finished I will apply the priorities to my list of projects and amend the time I want to spend on each item listed. Subsequently, after the overhaul is finished, I will set out a plan for an ideal work week where I will distribute parts of a day, hours or entire days to certain items on my list. Some might only come up every second week and thus a monthly plan might be added. Important for me is the visualisation and ease of use. The system I am developing might seem complex to start out with but it gives me a thorough understanding and takes many variables into account and thus helps me to stay motivated on certain topics and to enforce rules to stick more with what I really want, and reduce time and energy on stuff I don’t like nor cherish. In my humble opinion, success, contentment and authenticity is a result of consistently pursuing our inner calling and values and applying them to our personal lives, no matter whether leisure time or working hours.
This might sound a bit complicated at first but if you get the hang of it and walk through step by step you’ll find it easy and very revealing. The insights I gained thus far are very surprising and uplifting at the same time. You will see, when you take the step by step approach you’ll be surprised by the outcome and the ease you can apply the new learnings and insights. You will be more motivated and dedicated to work on the topics because you know that you spend your time on important topics which are close and represent deeper meaning to you. Outsourcing tasks or projects you don’t like or minimize spending time to a bearable and suitable minimum might be outcomes you’ll apply by following this practice.
Most important for me is to spend my time wisely and to follow up on things I like, which shall bring happiness and contentment to my life. By following through and applying systems to better spend my time is rather new to me and admittedly I have not spent much thinking on that topic on a meta-level before, now it seems that all falls in place, like putting one jigsaw piece after another until the bigger picture slowly reveals in front of my eyes.
With appreciation,
Uwe
PS: Please feel free to clap, comment on this article or share learnings you have made, or what particular practice has helped you to handle your work-life balance to your liking?
PPS: If you like to try coworking, you might want to visit me in Bansko and try a day of free coworking. Check out what we do and visit our page: http://coworkingbansko.com