How to live balanced life as an Engineer?

Techniques for Engineered Life

👋 Hey there, I am Gourav. I write about Engineering, Productivity, Thought Leadership, and the Mysteries of the mind!

We are going to be a 1000+ member community pretty soon, thank you for all the support!

---

Are you a Tech-savvy Engineer who is told to:

1/ Excel at work; 2/ Exercise at least 4 times a week; 3/ Pay taxes on time; 4/ Invest in high-performing assets; 5/ Be the best parent and spouse; 6/ Read books and newsletters; 7/ Become mindful and spiritual; 8/ Learn new skills; 9/ Travel the planet, and 10/ Crush the damn to-do list…

You are not alone!

We have been advised, thanks to the social media influx, to manage multiple life aspects simultaneously. But we are rarely informed how to effectively do a million things at once. In reality, our demanding jobs consume most of our time and we lose everything else.

Today, I am going to share a few interesting strategies I have adopted to get the most out of my life without getting overwhelmed.

My goal in sharing the tools and techniques is to help you solve the puzzle of managing this multifaceted life more efficiently.

There is no user manual to life. Problems come first, and wisdom to handle those comes later when we go through failures.

This is by design. Because we learn the most by solving problems and overcoming failures.

— Swami Mukandananda

My Techniques to Live a Balanced Life

I have divided it into 5 sections which are the key sections.

1. Work-Life Harmony via Prioritization and Delegation

Link to the LinkedIn Post.

Embrace Spikes & Prioritize

It’s okay if some days are work-heavy while others are more focused on personal matters. Planning my day through heavy prioritization in the calendar and clear communication about the same at the workplace helped me attain harmony between the two realms and reduced my stress level. It keeps me in check to not overdo my office work.

Acknowledge that you’d need to drop your kids off at daycare, talk to Tax Advisors or financial planners, visit for doctor appointments, and do many other things that could only be done on weekdays in between work. This is perfectly normal.

Delegation

I use the Todoist app to manage different to-do-list tasks and divide those into projects as per the Eisenhower matrix which helps decide the importance and urgency of tasks which then helps me decide ‘What can I delegate’.

I take it seriously. I delegate heavily.

• At work, I trust Engineers who can do the work which also helps them grow.

• In my personal life, I have a workforce, built over years, in place that I can rely upon. I have cleaners scheduled every 2 weeks for deep cleaning. Similarly, I have a tax advisor, property agent, Banking relationship partner, Auto-scheduled grocery deliveries, and much more. I strongly believe in putting the right people at the right job.

The key is to understand the value of your time and balance out between DIY and delegation expenses.

2. Financial Growth using Automations

A DIY investment strategy of investing in stocks and managing them is time-consuming and cumbersome. Use a financial planner/agent or Three Fund Portfolio to optimize for time and growth in equity.

After losing a lot of money and time, I learned two lessons:

• Investing should be as boring as watching the grass grow.

• Active equity investment is not ‘my thing’ with a full-time job.

Delving into a few chapters of "The Intelligent Investor," the wisdom struck me: an average investor in the USA can fare better with a simple “Three-Fund Portfolio” (managed passively or through robo-bots) than those constantly scrutinizing daily charts and staying overly active.

• For a good portion of this kind of investing, I use maxed-out Pre-tax 401k as well as Mega-backdoor Roth IRA contributions advantage.

• For foreign investments (India), I use an agent. Having someone manage my investments while I sleep peacefully is great because they understand the right times to shift money around. This helps me avoid the opportunity cost of potentially missing out on gains that could happen if I tried handling everything on my own. The fee paid to them is worth it.

The key takeaway is to Automate Investing - via technology and by involving experts.

3. Win on Physical and Mental Health by Overcoming Friction

Physical Health

The biggest life hack to keep yourself on track for physical health is to understand that your mind plays games.

All I need to do is take the first step and break the inertia.

• I don’t think about working an hour daily. I just think of 5-10 minutes. I end it whenever I think is okay to do so but push myself every time.

• Believe me, once I think that I will just do 20 pushups and squats each, I end up working out for more than 40 minutes because of the momentum that gets built up.

You may not love to start, but you will definitely cherish it once you’ve done it.

This reminds me of this recent post from Anthony Vicino:

Mental health :

• To build a knowledge base, I listen to motivational podcasts and YouTube videos while driving to run errands.

• I spare just 10 minutes to do meditation morning, and guess what? Time flies. (same idea from physical health). My meditations are spiritual in nature.

• I built a habit system of practicing and training my mind using the Productive app that reminds me that there is always someone else having bigger problems than me. Not taking conflicts seriously, treating failures as learning, and having gratitude, humbleness, and empathy for others are key factors that maintain my inner peace.

4. Driving Personal Growth via Writing

Writing helps you think deeply. No matter what you are learning for Personal growth, writing it down makes it simpler to understand and retain.

Personally, my avenue for growth is through writing this newsletter.

This skill allows me to absorb various learnings and share them through my newsletter, providing actionable content that adds value to others' lives.

To achieve this:

• My mornings are sacred. My routine involves dedicating at least an hour each morning to document my learnings before starting work.

• I fuel this growth by listening to podcasts, reading books, and documenting my own experiences in Notion and Google docs.

Tip: You can also leverage audiobooks and book summaries to save time.

Raviraj Achar

wrote a whole about it here.

5. Family and Relationships

The key is to make deposits into the deed bank.

An act of appreciation for your partner, sharing the burden of day-to-day activities, and taking care of their needs are deposits that you make. This needs mindfulness more than time.

Everything you do is tied back to your family.

Plan activities, dinner dates, travel, and relaxing vacations, or simply cook dinner together. To do that, I have reminders set to plan out family days in advance. That includes 15-30 minutes of planning, booking, calling, etc. three days a week during lunch time using custom GPTs. It’s fun and makes daily family time even more engaging.

---

Latest Interesting reads

1. 5 Mistakes That Made My Documents Terrible by

   Raviraj Achar

2. Taking Decisions in Engineering Teams by

   Nicola Ballotta

3. If Your Network Is Your Net Worth, This Is How You Get Rich by

   Irina Stanescu

4. Joining an early-stage startup might not be financially worth it by

   Avneesh Sharma

5. How I Almost Quit Because of $75 by

   Anton Zaides

6. How to Multiply Your Experience As a Software Engineer by

   Basma Taha

---

Let’s Connect

Sponsorship: Unlock the potential for your business to shine! Simply reply to this email or DM on LinkedIn. Refer to the sponsorship packages here.

Collaboration: Whether it's cross-content sharing, podcasts, or interviews, let's create something amazing together. My DMs are open on LinkedIn.

Follow me for daily informational

🤝 Connect with me on LinkedIn

💪 Connect for 1:1 mentorship

𝕏 Connect with me on Twitter

Be the change you want to see,

Gourav Khanijoe