Stop trying to achieve work-life balance and you'll actually get things done

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Quora user Lukas Schwekendiek suggests that success comes after hard work, but only if that hard work is done properly. He writes:
"There are only ever a few tasks that really count, with the rest of the things supporting that core...In the same way, your business, relationships and finances are also not going to improve if you do not do the few tasks that matter!"
He compares running a business like going to the gym - you can read everything there is to know about the gym and go once a week, or you can know almost nothing about fitness and spend two hours a day at the gym. Chances are, if you spend two hours a day there, you'll be healthier.

By Shana Lebowitz, Business Insider

• A helpful time-management tip is to remember that work-life balance doesn't necessarily have to happen every single day.

• Productivity expert Laura Vanderkam recommends thinking in terms of what you get done every 168 hours (i.e., every week).

• Human performance expert Brad Stulberg views balance in terms of seasons, as opposed to hours.

A recent article by Olga Khazan in The Atlantic makes the case for embracing work-life imbalance.

Almost every ambitious professional wants to juggle their priorities effortlessly, and somehow this skill seems to elude us all.

Khazan quotes Brad Stulberg, coauthor of "The Passion Paradox," who recommends thinking of balance in terms of "seasons," as opposed to hours in a day. "There might be a season where you're writing a book, and that's the thing," Stulberg told The Atlantic. "There might be a season when you're starting a family." The allocation of your time and attention will look lopsided - and maybe it has to, if you want to do a good job at any one thing.

Stulberg's insights recall time-management expert Laura Vanderkam's musings on the "24-hour trap." The trap represents the idea that a work-life balance has to happen every day - that every 24 hours must be neatly divided between your professional responsibilities and everything else you care about. And it's a "trap" because it's virtually impossible for many people to achieve, especially parents who hold jobs outside the home.

A better option, Vanderkam says, is to think in terms of 168 hours, or full weeks. Even if you can't fit in a full eight hours of work, two meals with your kids, and a date with your partner every single day, you can probably make time for everyone over the course of seven days.

Some high-earning women work shorter days for part of the week in order to spend time with their family

Vanderkam is the author of multiple books on productivity and time management, including "I Know How She Does It." In the book she writes that most people think of the week as Monday through midday Thursday. If they can't fit all their personal and professional priorities into that time period, they feel like a terrible employee, a terrible parent, or a dysfunctional human being.

Vanderkam urges readers to embrace Friday through Sunday as usable time, too. For one thing, you might want to do some work on the weekends so you can leave the office at a reasonable hour during the week. Or it could simply mean seeing the hours you spend with your kids on Saturdays and Sundays as an investment in your family, instead of discounting them.

"Any given 24 hours might not be balanced, but the 168-hour week can be," Vanderkam writes.

For the book, Vanderkam had dozens of high-earning women keep time logs, and she analyzed them for trends and surprises. Some women whose logs she analyzed deliberately worked long days part of the week and shorter days the rest of the week so they could be with their families.

Perhaps the most important takeaway is that you can still be a good parent, or a good member of an organization, even if your days don't look "balanced" in the traditional sense. So don't necessarily assume you can't pursue a career in consulting, for example, because it requires some travel and you have kids at home.

With a little creativity, you can probably make it happen.