Over time I've had to find a balance between family and work, which has left me facing the problem of accomplishing the same amount of work in less time. I can't say that I've completely accomplished that - I definitely work less now than I did five years ago. I have, however, learned a few tricks to cheat and still get a lot of work done: (1) identify "opportunity" time, (2) identify tasks that can be deferred to the weekend, (3) estimate required time / effort, and (4) schedule my weekend activities. Using this approach, I'm able to consistently put in 6 - 8 hours of productive work time on a weekend without stealing anything from my family time.
- The bulk of the cheat is finding the "opportunity time", or time during the weekend when no one will miss me. This is like sneaking off to the back room at the in-law's Thanksgiving to catch a bit of the big game while Wifey and Mom talk about how the stuffing would have been so much better if Dad would have laid off of the onion. I found my opportunity time between around 4:30 am and 7:30 am, which is roughly when both my wife and children are still sleeping. 4:30 am might sound bad to some, but for a work-a-holic, delirium tremens sets in after a few hours of work deprivation and waking up is easy. I've also found a second block of time between 9pm to 11pm which is after the kids are sleeping and my wife is drained from taking care of the kids and house all day and decides to knock off as well (but more often than not I choose to watch the Outer Limits or play Rock Band during that time).
- Now that I know when I can get away with cheating, I regularly identify tasks that I can defer to the weekend with confidence of being able to complete them. Generally these are things that aren't due until the following week sometime (not necessarily Monday). I *almost never* select tasks that are actually due Monday morning or Friday evenings, etc. just on the off chance that something comes up that prevents me from actually taking advantage of my opportunity time (like the kids waking up way too early and piling in my study just to watch me type - which really means going through my drawers and pushing power buttons on miscellaneous network and server equipment).
- With a complete list of all of the weekend possibilities in hand, I estimate the amount of time needed to complete each activity and select a grouping of tasks that can be completed in my available time. This really isn't that difficult because I am a time management nut. I compulsively log and document my time (even when I'm not working) using a task management and time logging tool. So, for instance, not only do I know how long it takes to provision a web server from scratch nearly to the minute, but I also know that I take 4 bathroom breaks, 2 water breaks and check my email twice in a four hour time span and exactly how much time those things take me. I'll admit that I take the whole time logging thing a bit far - friends come over to chat and I have them wait for a moment while I "clock out" of whatever I'm doing and "clock in" to "chatting with a friend". My wife hates it when she comes in to give me a kiss in the morning and I clock out first then clock in to "kiss my beautiful wife".
- Finally, I prioritize and schedule my weekend activities during my opportunity time. I pick the items whose completion will benefit me the most during the coming week and that I can button up completely during the weekend. I used to keep a written list, but that made it difficult to continue to document the time and details of my efforts which led to poor estimation. I now (as crazy as it seems) manage all of my tasks with task management software so that I can take advantage of the learning from each activity to better estimate and schedule future activities.
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