Please forgive my bad English. I am not a native English speaker.

Very few self-improvement books contain information about the need to maintain a balance between work and leisure. Most such books promote a “work yourself to the death” approach. If you do that, in a few years you won’t be able to work anymore because you’ll hate work, and won’t be able to enjoy yourself, because you forgot how to do that and put your mind into a “work continously” mode.

When I do work which is difficult, I try to alternate between work and leisure. For example, if I have to go downtown and see several different offices (in my country beurocracy is common and there is a lot of waiting in line, arguing with the clerks, having to go to another office in another part of the city, etc) I make a point to go to 1-2 offices, and then, in the way to the third office, take a break - eat something at a restaurant, walk a little in a park, etc. It seems wasteful when looked at from a “work all the time” perspective, but in fact I discovered that if I do it this way, I can do a lot more than if I take the “work all the time without pause” approach.

Sometimes I even start my work day with something like 10 minutes of having fun. I discovered that this also helps productivity.

I think that when you choose a fun activity, you must take great care to avoid “grey” activities. That is, to avoid activities which are not work, but which also aren’t very entertaining or very resting.

For example:

I’m very tired or bored with work, and I decide to take a 15 minutes break. I set an alarm after 15 minutes. If I start browsing the web, this is a semi-pleasurable activity. At the end of the 15 minutes, my state will be almost the same as when starting browsing the web, because in fact I didn’t have any fun. My tendency will be to postpone starting work, and keep browsing the web.

Instead, if I choose a very pleasurable activitie, such as watching a part of a very fun movie or listening to a comedy I like, then at the end of the break I will feel refreshed, my state will be a lot better, and I shall restart work a lot easier and with greater enthusiasm.

Another way to do things which are extremely difficult or to do normal things when I am extremely tired is to break them out into very small parts (write the parts on paper), and then do the parts one by one.

This has the added advantage that when my attention slips, I know exactly where I have to start again (because as I do tasks I check them on paper, and always know what the next task is).

Some other tips for doing difficult things:

- Start immediately without thinking a lot about the task you are about to do. This way you won’t think about how difficult it is.

- If the difficult task is a repeating one, do the task more often. Don’t avoid it. Eventually you will get used to it, and your mind or body will get trained to do it faster.

The schedules of many people are not realistic. A few years ago, my schedule was completely unrealistic, and I was very depressed because I couldn’t get things done.

The following exercises have helped me a lot:

1. Before starting something, I estimate how much it will take. After I finish something, I compare the estimation with the actual time taken. Because of this, I have gotten good at estimates.

2. When I make a to-do list, I also estimate how much each item will take. The first time I did this, I have seen that the items I scheduled for next week take in fact one month. Nowadays I schedule realistically - if some things are going to take 1 month, at least I know this and I’m not depressed because I couldn’t do them in 1 week.