Getting things done, an art.

Establishing a balance between our work life and personal life has become a necessity for a productive lifestyle.

During the AIESEC recruitment process, an important question is posed to every individual aspiring to be part of the organization. How many hours are you willing to dedicate to your AIESEC experience?

Time, what we want most, and what we use worst. -William Penn

It comes as no surprise the answers given by these eager individuals—an hour a day, five hours a week, etcetera. A few months into your experience with the organization and you realize that it is like working a full-time job. We spend Mondays to Fridays and sometimes even weekends performing tasks, attending meetings, planning events, and having fun while at it.

Despite being an AIESECer, you are a student, a daughter or a son, a friend. You have other duties and responsibilities to attend to other than "work-related activities." The question is, how do all these life responsibilities coexist in perfect harmony? The simple answer is they do not.

Attaining this balance is not about getting everything done at a set time but the quality of work done, relationships developed, and rest achieved with time as the limiting factor.

Productivity as a means to an end.

Productivity as a goal is a means to a tragic end. Our focus towards achieving a productive and wholesome lifestyle should therefore be on creating efficiency and remaining motivated.

1. Creating Efficiency. Creating efficiency solely depends on how an individual enjoys performing their tasks. A preferred way to do this is by writing down your weekly task and further breaking them down into daily tasks, which you can further break down into smaller tasks.

By laying it all down, you can visualize what you want to do, establish systems to get it done, and finally get it done. In AIESEC, we use an accountability tool that ensures our members' efficiency in getting things done. At the beginning of each month, we write down our focus areas for the month.

Then, during each week, we break down the focus areas into mini-tasks that we should do to achieve the month's focus. We mark our progress on each task and, by the end of the week, determine which tasks we were able to complete, which are still in progress, and which we have not attempted to do.

2. Remaining motivated . Remaining motivated to start, continue and complete anything is essential to being productive, but this is not always the case. How do we ensure we stay motivated? We analyze the tasks at hand and our energy towards them.

An example: making your bed after waking up in the morning. What does performing this task do to your energy levels? Do you feel pumped to start your day? Do you feel neutrality after this task, or are your energy levels diminished? By performing this analysis, we can identify what demotivates us. How do we remedy this? By first going through the motions.

Acknowledging your lack of will to perform specific responsibilities and understanding 'why' this is the case will help you to bounce back. Another thing that I have found helpful is pairing your energy-giving activities with those that drain your energy. An example: writing an essay may drain your energy but writing the essay after having a boost of energy from drinking your favorite beverage is a plus.

The choices that are most powerful in generating motivation… are decisions that do two things: they convince us that we're in control, and they endow our actions with larger meaning (Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better).