All about balancing your work-life balance

There are four different, or should we say main, factors in life that you have to learn to master in order to maintain a healthy life style. Those factors are:

• Your career
• Family
• Friends
• And your Health

And the main idea is to balance. You are not required to give one of those factors more effort or time than the other to live a successfully healthy life.

But is it even possible? Especially in our chaotic and demanding industry!

Interact’s own Mina Shawky, Head of Service Delivery, is happy to point out some tips on how to balance those four important factors

Career

In all the different IT companies you get around 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, to work, but is it always enough?

Being a Software Developer for 3 years and managing software projects for more than 5 I can tell you that the answer is, simply, No!

In project-ised environments, like ours, working 40 hours per week is usually not enough to get things done. People are always on their toes with deadlines, customer demands, demos, quality enhancements, features, phases, new technologies, research, investigation, POCs, topping competition, etc… and the list goes on. If you work in this industry, and you want to succeed, you have to give it all out.

You all agree, right? So how is it even possible to give enough time for growing and excelling in your career while maintaining a healthy life?

The answer is actually simpler than you can imagine. Just give those tips some thought and you might find them of value for you

• Deliver the requirements: As easy as it sounds this is the key for getting things done. Software developers, especially tech-savvy ones, tend to add more. In the world of project management this is called “Gold Plating” and it is something that we would want to avoid. When the software requirements are to do X, Y and Z then focus on delivering X, Y and Z… No need to put any extra effort in adding more.
  
• Work smart: The keyword here is “quickness”… Why reinvent the wheel? Being in this industry you get to expose yourself to a huge number of communities and developers who have previously ran into your problems and have made/built a solution for it. Spending hours and hours of restless, sleepless, time working hard trying to solve a lousy bug, or build a component from scratch, is not smart. Searching Google or asking someone more senior for a solution is being smart. And believe me, management loves and appreciates team members who are smart and quick in finding quality solutions than those who spend too much time in doing so.
• Eliminate Waste: Have you heard of a topic called “Lean Manufacturing” or the “Toyota way”? If not I highly recommend you look it up. You are given 8 hours per day for work. Use them! The very common and sad fact is that most software developers tend to waste valuable working hours doing something else. This results in spending more late hours at work at a later stage because at the end you have to get things done
• Limit and if possible eliminate interruptions: Going out for a smoke, side discussions, noise, and other factors tend to interrupt your work resulting in the need to spend extra hours doing your work. Try to eliminate all interruptions for better use of your time
• Learn to communicate: Most fresh and young team members always have the tendency to accept any work or customer requirements no matter how hard, irrational, or un-logical they may be. Learn to communicate, negotiate, and discuss proper ways to do things right.
• Give proper estimates: Believe me, it’s not a challenge or a race. When you are asked to estimate an assignment think of everything that goes around this assignment (from coding, unit testing, integration testing, but fixing, etc…) and give yourself enough time to do all those with proper quality. Also you must learn to be able to back it up and negotiate your estimates with your manager.

Family

Now for the second important factor you need to control, to balance your healthy life, and that’s family.

• Time: Try to always give and spend quality time with family on regular basis. Weekends are usually good time to spend a few hours with family
• Quality: No smart phones… No Facebook… No social media during discussions. Your virtual social life can wait during real life social activities. Not to mention it is very offensive when someone is talking to you with your face always looking at the phone screen

Health

Ever gave this quote – that we used to learn for years and years since we were kids – a serious thought?

Stronger Body, Stronger Mind

العقل السليم في الجسم السليم

• Be fit: Speaking of my self. I have always had the issue of finding time to do proper workout (especially that I grew up never being a sports guy)
  
• Find time: Learn to workout daily. Find time for it… Even if it means you have to wake up an hour earlier! Believe it or not, but once you are in proper form and shape you tend to give your day more hours and energy than you used to. Not to mention working out is also a very good solution for taking out your anger or frustrations.

• Run: Regularly… It helps maintain a strong heart… Have you heard of those people who run Cairo every Friday morning?
  
• Cycle: Interact’s own veteran Ahmed Atef comes to work every day riding his bike. If you work close to home why not try it out? It also helps save a lot of time being stuck in Cairo’s lovely traffic.

Friends:

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else

• Get Real: Spending hours and hours in front of the computer and virtual social networks can be tiresome. Having real friends and spending time with them on a regular basis is always a relief.
• Smart phones are a no no: And remember we talked about No smart phones, Facebook, or other social networking activities during your quality time with family… Same applies for time with friends. Always try to value the fact that human interaction and communication is a lot better than that of the virtual world
• Explore: Life becomes more interesting when you change sceneries, meet different people, try new stuff.
• Business opportunities: Having good friends, especially in our industry, can always help in growing your business and career.
• Inspire: When you are able to balance all those factors and live healthy you become a source of motivation and inspiration to your friends.

The verdict

Now for the hard question, how to do all this? Too many tips and not enough time!

Decide how you want to proceed with your life. You have to make your own choice on how to use your time. It’s all about changing your mindset and maintaining your goals. Can you wake up an hour earlier and hit the gym or go for a run? Can you focus on working smart during your 8 hours of work? Will you value the time you spend with friends and family?

Failing to make such decisions will result in being buried with tons of work, with no time to refresh, regroup, or have fun! And when its not fun, it’s not worth it.

Here at Interact we definitely value all those points and always seek to live healthy and have fun while doing our jobs.

Proudly crafting – and we enjoy doing so – in Egypt.