Everyone talks about “work-life balance,” but as a perfectionist, I had a problem: if all my work is scheduled, how can I schedule life, and more importantly, should life be scheduled? My calendar was full of lectures, library blocks, and deadlines, but the “living” part was always pushed to the following week.
Searching for a solution, I came across the 80/20 way of eating as loved by Jennifer Aniston. This lifestyle involves healthy eating 80% of the time and “indulgence” for the other 20%. This lifestyle usually refers to diet, but as all obsessers do, I blew this WAY out of proportion by extending it to exercise, work, and play. Everything about me is 80/20, and here’s how it appears in my day-to-day life.
What 80/20 looks like for me
Food: I am a meal prep queen; 7 breakfasts, 5 lunches, and 5 dinners a week are prepped on Sunday afternoons. If you do the math, that is exactly 80% of the 21 meals in a week healthy, prepped, and planned (I didn’t plan this, but apparently I am even more 80/20 than I thought). I like to leave extra wiggle room for spontaneous lunches throughout the week or the weekend pizzas I end up with. Food is the biggest part of the 80/20 for me, as scheduling a healthy, feel-good meal for 80% of the week leaves me feeling good when I yearn for Parmesan fries on a Friday night or feel the call of a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream with my movie. Scheduling meals means committing to hot dates with the food going out of date in my fridge. It ensures I eat well most of the week and leaves me with days I can spontaneously schedule social events or dinners with friends.
Exercise: Every weekday at 4 p.m., I have a recurring date with the Fife East Sands Leisure Center. These are the days I commit to working hard, sweating my bum off, and “getting those gains” as I overhear the gym boys say. The weekends I leave open for play; weekend days I hot-girl-walk with friends, take advantage of the sun, or dance the night away: workouts that don’t feel like chores. On the weekends, I remind myself that exercise is a gift; I get to play with friends and wake up feeling good. Scheduling the exercise also means that on days I just don’t feel like it, I don’t do it!
Work: For me, work scheduling isn’t just about the weekly unmissable classes. I like to visually represent the hours of work spent on each thing with “work on essay”, “test studying coffee date,” “library focus time”, so that I can see just how hard I have worked. Scheduling the hours in which 80% of my work will get done leaves 20% of my assessments for late-night spur-of-the-moment cram sessions or hours dragging my feet when the words won’t flow as they should. With this tactic, I can schedule the work to be 100% finished before the deadline.
Social: This is a crucial piece of my scheduling puzzle. When I schedule my life out to finish essays and meet deadlines, the first thing to go is my social life. This makes sense, but constantly missing small moments of connection can make a big difference in your well-being. Instead, I like to schedule friend-dates throughout the week. Whether they are studying, going to the gym, or having general playtime, I make sure my social side is cared for as well. The 20% in my social life is for days I know I am likely to be overwhelmed or overworked – on these days, I schedule out blocks of me time. I protect these moments for self-care, everything showers, coloring sessions in my Coco Wyo coloring book, or the necessary naps of the week, and on days I feel like it, time with friends. The act of scheduling blocks allows me to not feel guilty about having me time, as it’s already in the schedule, it becomes just as important as work and fitness.
My perfectionism required a fully scheduled life, but the 80/20 rule taught me that filling a schedule with a 100% productive life doesn’t necessarily mean living well. My 80/20 lifestyle has shown me that you can’t necessarily schedule life, but you can protect 20% of your time for the small moments to happen. Since this change, my scheduled spontaneous time (albeit a little ironic) has quickly become one of my favorite parts of living.