Someone who I respect a lot recently came back from an extedned vacation. His return reminded me of an approach that he once mentioned to me about managing work life balance. He talked of the 5 F's of life and how you should plan goals around these, measure progress and do a review just like you would for the most important project at work.
Lauri and I started doing this last year, we set goals around the 5 F's, mapping out one year, five years and ten years. We plan to do a yearly review in the summer on how we did. Our Five F's are:
1. Faith
2. Family
3. Finance
4. Fitness
5. Philtantropy
I've always believed that work/life balance is a sort of mythical thing and almost impossible to achieve. Having clear goals and measuring our progress has definitely helped.