How I manage my workload with no work-life balance.

"Khushi seems to have 25 hours in a day" ​ - Director of Product Marketing EMEA at Adobe

I have a lot of projects ongoing at any given moment.

Full-time work, consulting projects, courses to take, personal life and events to attend. There are a lot of balls to juggle. And I cannot drop any of them.

After a year of iteration, this is what’s worked for me

First, I drop all tasks in Todoist. If it’s not on my Todoist, I will likely not do it.

I used to pay for Todoist but their free plan is so good that they need to have some paywalls.

Every task has three things: 

• client name: i have short codes for all. if it’s for my blog, i file it under TO.

• categorized: is it to be done now or can it be done later?

• links: to figma, slack or anywhere else the conversation currently happens so I don’t struggle for links

I never add due dates unless there’s an actual pressing deadline. Because it’s a hassle to keep updating due dates.

I also try not to accept tasks that aren’t actionable. For example, if I’m tasked to work on a project where I don’t see a clear vision, I try to probe deeper.

In other cases, I will drop the task under “Ideas” categories. Or silo it into “Next Meetings”.

Before I start my week, I plan out everything that I want to get done that week.

Broken down by the exact day.

Prior to that day, I’ll also make an hourly level plan so I know what I need to deliver.

This happens outside of Todoist. On multiple whiteboards. You cannot do this on Todoist easily.

There’s one more medium-sized whiteboard on the other side of the room.

I only start actively executing once things are clearly laid out on the whiteboard. Every task gets broken down so I execute it quicker at the highest quality level.

I don’t do well with shared team kanbans — they require a lot of manual updating to keep up with. Plus, everyone else likes to have their own visualizations. And I like to work in my own mess.

Taking breaks

I don’t like the pomodoro method where you work for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break. It forces you to lose focus.

Instead, I work in stretches of 4-5 hours. Then, take a break to grab something to eat. And then work again for 5-7 hours again before I hit the bed.

There are certain days where I’ll go play badminton. I might also go for a Yoga session downstairs in the society club. I like alternating between different sports to keep things interesting.

On the weekends, I might go out for dinner/lunch. But I’m always back home within 2 hours.

For friends who live in a different city, I schedule “Life Update” calls. This helps me keep up with what’s going on in their lives without constantly texting them.

This might feel like I have no work life balance. And I don’t.

But this is my dream life.

When I was in Paris during my student exchange program, I took the maximum number of courses along with a 20 hour work week internship gig.

This was tough — I wanted to top all the courses, make all of my own meals (no vegetarian options in Cergy), do housework, plus do an internship well enough to extend even after I returned to India.

This is the life I chose. And I’m not going to shy away from it now that I have it all.

Streamline’s a calm company, which means there’s no pressure to do this. I can scale up or down depending on my mood.

I also don’t take all my holidays.

The only ones I take are for weddings or birthdays. Or rest days. When I don’t feel like my output’s going to bring any value to the company.

Work life balance is not on my cards today. I’d much rather put 100 hour work weeks and get the experience of someone in 1 year what would take 2.5 years to get.

I can relax later if I wanted to with a stacked up skill set.

Ending the day

I also like to maintain a simple gratitude journal following John Fish’s pattern.

It has these things:

1. Schedule: minute-by-minute planner

2. Goals: what are my main goals?

3. Motivation: what’s motivating me to deliver?

4. Happiness: what made me happy that day?

You can also use the Journal app by Intelligent Change (Android / iOS). It's got similar questions and a far better UX. I don't stick to it because I worry about the data I share and because I have to fill it twice.

That’s pretty much it! I don't want to make things look easy. It took a lot of effort and even more luck to get here.

I'm going to need a whole lot more luck to get to where I want to go in a few more years.

Thanks for reading. If you want to follow along my journey, please drop your email below.

Best,

Khushi