Maximize Your Work Life Balance

Maximize Your Work Life Balance Whether youre a CEO or a student, its fairly common to hear complaints about balancing your commitments and goals. Between work, school, and personal life busy schedules make most of us feel like theres never enough time to get it all done. Work is part of life, but it doesnt have to control the way you live. There needs to be a balance between the two that enables you to gain the most out of both.The issue is usually not in the realization that there is a problem or knowing that you should have a more balanced approach to your life professionals get bogged down by developing a plan of action and then actually sticking to it. The tricky part of change is to develop a concise course of action and then implementing that action in a consistent manner.Here are some tips to developing a program to maximize your work life balanceVisualize If youre struggling to find a he althy work-life balance, consider writing out an action plan to address the long-term goals you want to accomplish. Before you prepare your list, make aya every item is a S.M.A.R.T. goal that is, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A goal such as, I want to be rich, is not acceptable answer. I want to own a yacht by the time Im 50, is slightly better. The best possible answers involve specific places, times and events that are realistic to achieve.Plan Now that youve made your list of (realistic) hopes and dreams both on the work and the life side of the equation, its time to make some concessions. Thats right, you cant have everything. Trade-offs are part of the deal you cant spend all day long with your kids, or writing your novel, or gardening and expect one day be a hot-shot Wall Street lawyer. Extravagant career goals, life goals, and retirement goals all have their time and place in our imaginations, but SMART goals keep us in reality, and push us to achieve whats physically possible. Go through your list and ensure that your goals are grounded in a practical understanding of your own motivations.Implement The final step is to start living in line with your goals. You know what you want, now go out and get it. Start making changes today, even if they seem minor. You can save the big hurdles for later when youre ready to go all in. You have the guidelines in front of you, written out and re-evaluated so make and take the the stepping stones youll need to achieve tomorrows success. Keep your steps small and credibly achievable. For example, if you want to develop a better relationship with your child, make a concrete, but small step spend an extra 15 minutes talking after dinner. Too many professionals stop at the intangible, long-term goals and big plans they never perform the small steps required to make the plan happen.Do you notice how work life balance contrasts work with your life as if they are two separate entities? Fo r most of us, work is a big part of our life. We should perhaps adopt a new vernacular to fit a modern professional lifestyle life, split between work and personal spheres. Work isinextricablyinterwoven into our lives, and we should instead look to improve our whole life instead of taking a bifurcated view of it as work and life.When planning and executing your work life balance plan, be sure to think of the whole first how to raise the quality and happiness in your whole life, and map those into actionable goals under each personal and professional sphere. When you have your overall goals mapped out in detail, the specific visualization, planning, and implementation described above can be put into place.

The Perfect Resume Looks Like This

The Perfect Resume Looks Like ThisThe Perfect Resume Looks Like This Resumes are essential to the job search, but lets be honest creating one is not exactly anyones idea of a good time. With so many conflicting pieces of advice, you might feel like you dont know where to start or what to do. But dont worry - this time, weve done the heavy lifting. We combed throughsome of our best resume advice and compiled it into one infographic to give you an easy-to-follow outline for a resume that will wow recruiters and hopefully, land you the job of your dreams.Ready for a resume revamp? Read on below1.Design Matters Dont go overboard with intricately decorated templates.Look for sufficient white space, margins of at least .7 inches, and a font size no smaller than 11 pt.2. Be Reachable Make it easy for recruiters to reach out to you by providing your contact info near the header.3. Show Off Your Skills Dont make recruiters hunt for the most critical information on your re sume - include a table of your key soft and hard skill sets up top. Make sure yourhighlighted skills show why youre a good fit for the job - all the better if these are keywords from the job description.4. List Your Experience This section should include each company youve worked for, your title, the dates you worked there, and several bullet points that describe your key accomplishments and responsibilities.5. Quantify Your Experience Whenever you can, use concrete data points - it helps provide recruiters with the scope and context of your work, and demonstrates how you contributed to the bottom line.6. Include Other Positions Dont be afraid to include positions that arent directly related to the one youre applying for, especially if you have limited work experience. You can still use it to demonstrate the skills and qualities you want highlighted.7. Get the Grade Many jobs require degrees or certifications, so make sure to list yours. GPA is optional, but may be worth inclu ding if youve graduated recently with high marks.8. The Extra Stuff Add some color to your resume with a short catch-all Additional Experience section at the end. Include clubs/organizations, volunteer experience, awards youve won, and even interesting hobbies or activities.9. Keep It Concise Limit your resume to 1-2 pages at the most.