There is much to be said for focus and prioritisation. I have vowed to work without BlackBerry for a few hours each day and see where that takes me.

The missus has been nagging me about my lack of work/life balance. A few years ago I believed that I was getting better, but the pressures of the recession do seem to have made everybody work harder than ever before.

Add to that the rapid advances in technology and I find it is ever more difficult to escape from work as my BlackBerry tempts me to keep an eye on the job 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I read a great newspaper article this week by a woman who argued that her job was impossible to do because it demanded she take on many tasks. She then did a test and worked out that if she cut out her constant chat on email and desire to bounce replies to everything that reaches her inbox or mobile then there was in fact plenty of time to complete her workload. After a few weeks of trying to work this way she concluded that she wasn’t very busy at all.

Sadly, I am not sure that is quite the case for me, but there is much to be said for focus and prioritisation. I have vowed to test the theory and work without email or BlackBerry for a good few hours each day and see where that takes me. If this doesn’t work then I shall have to try being a reclusive manager and refuse to meet with my marketing team. After all, they take an inordinate amount of time sitting in my office sipping coffee and complaining to me about each other, our agencies and the charlatans in our sales team.

“There is much to be said for focus and prioritisation. I have vowed to work without BlackBerry for a few hours each day and see where that takes me.”

Finally, I may also have to decline to attend the weekly management team meeting. That would save a lot of time and help me focus further, not to mention the added therapeutic benefit of not having to listen to my colleague in human resources drone on about our new online appraisal system and how nobody in my team ever completes it on time.

If I could rid myself of just some of these distractions, I could then focus on the things that matter most at this time of year. For the first time in years I would be able to prepare properly for the new fantasy football season. That would be one piece of work that my wife would be delighted I didn’t bring home.
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