One concept of 7 habits in Habit 3: Put First Things First is to put the big stones in life into our daily life first, before thinking about other smaller stuff. What I learned from Leo of Zen Habits was, to give every day of the week a name, and you focus on that on that day. Leo has 7 days in a week (I do too), and he assigned names like day of health, the day of productivity to each day, and he writes a blog on that topic on that day. This is actually a powerful idea. If you follow it, after few months, you will find yourself writing pretty balanced topics across all the categories, not just few of them.

It inspires me a great idea – to name each day of both private life and professional life a name. The key is to find 7 most important things in this stage of life, and really work on it on that day. It is not that the whole day is just for one goal, but it can provide a focus, and help on planning – you know exactly when that task/appointment/event should happen.

For example, I am thinking about assigning every Thursday as Technology day for me – in both professional and personal life. On the professional side, it is a good idea to arrange a code review, refactoring process, or just tech talk on that day for the team, and review the problems of the whole product, and to archive smaller code base. On the personal side, there are many things to follow and to understand on the technology side. It may be a good idea to work on it at home. At least, it is a good choice to fix my printer, or camera, or understand how to use the new equipment, or read something around technology.

Another example, Saturday may be a good choice for Family Day. Spend more time with friends, family together, make phone calls, and spend qualified time together… Go to movie with Wendy or play on the grassland with Yifan (well, Yifan prefers to go to big shopping malls better).

I hope that helps me to balance the life, and put priority stuff first.