Introduction

Life Balance is a time and task management program that helps you focus on what's really important to you and actively balance the often conflicting demands of career and personal life. Life Balance emphasizes the intrinsic importance that you've assigned to your projects and life goals, rather than arbitrarily filling every slot in your calendar. This helps you to spend your time and energy on what matters to you the most. You can be self-directed, and know that you are working toward long term goals while still managing your daily routine.

Some of the features that set Life Balance apart from most to-do list software are:

• A built-in outliner so that you can organize your tasks into projects
• The ability to reprioritize all the tasks in a project by dragging a single slider
• An unlimited number of places (categories) that you can use to filter your to-do list, according to where you are and when places are open and closed
• Dependencies, so that Step B won't appear on your list until Step A is finished
• Routine tasks, like laundry, that can be scheduled to happen with a flexible interval rather than scheduling for a particular day and time
• Lead times to gently bring your attention to approaching deadlines
• Pie charts that provide feedback on how you are spending your time
• A unique “balance” feature that nudges your to do list to help to bring your actual time and effort allocation more in line with your desires
• An active and knowledgeable user community available in the web site User Forums to help answer questions and discuss how to get the most out of the Life Balance software

Ultimately, Life Balance is software designed to help you achieve the feeling that you are living authentically and following your own unique path.

Philosophy

Life Balance has its own unique point of view. You will be able to use the software much more effectively if you understand its design philosophy before you get started entering your goals and tasks.

The following points may seem like common sense. They are. Unfortunately many very familiar and popular planning systems either ignore or downplay the significance of these principles. If you are used to using some other system, there may be an adjustment period as you become familiar with the Life Balance software. Knowing that the software uses these principles to guide its design can help you learn the software more quickly.

This guide is designed to introduce you to the features and capabilities of the software. From talking with customers, we know that there are many creative ways to use the Life Balance software to reach your goals. You'll find some specific suggestions in Tips and Hints. In addition to reading this guide, you may also want to join the discussion with the active Life Balance user community on the Llamagraphics web site to get the benefit of shared real-life experience.

Life Balance acknowledges the finite

Life Balance recognizes that you are a valuable but finite resource. Life Balance was designed knowing that you have one life, and there are only twenty-four hours in a day.

You may be a busy person with conflicting demands on your time. You may be a creative person who can generate ideas faster than you can work on them. You may have personal goals that get put aside more often than you would like.You simply may not be able do everything that is asked of you.

Whatever challenges you face, Life Balance offers real assistance in making tough choices every day. You can do extraordinary and wonderful things if you focus your attention on the individual tasks each day that contribute most to your long term goals.

Some of life’s most rewarding goals are best accomplished over a long time scale, but short-term commitments can easily overwhelm your long-term goals. Life Balance helps you to focus on what is important and what can be done, no matter what the time scale of the project.

Life Balance simplifies decision making

Life Balance understands that you can only keep so much detail in your head at once. Our software can keep track of hundreds of tasks, but it will make every effort to keep the highest priority tasks at the top of your list where they will get your full attention. Life Balance also tries to show a list of suggestions for actions that are appropriate to the time and place where you are at the moment.

When you set the importance of a task, Life Balance only asks you to make simple, clear-cut decisions. Much of your time with Life Balance software will be spent in the Outline, where you write down your major goals and break them down, step by step, until they are small enough so that you can tackle a task in one sitting.

On the other hand, Life Balance does not penalize you for thinking big. Feel free to include items that you've always wanted to do, but never seem to get around to. Life Balance can help you with these dream projects!

Life Balance adjusts to rapidly changing situations

Life Balance was designed with the understanding that things change, sometimes suddenly. If your priorities shift, Life Balance can usually reprioritize your entire list with the change of a single slider.

Much of the stress that people experience is due to having to constantly reassess whether a task for work is of higher priority than a task for a personal project or obligation. Life Balance does not ask you to compare the overall priority of unrelated tasks.

Life Balance separates the decisions about when, where, and why a task needs to be done. If any of those details change, Life Balance immediately adjusts the overall priority order of your to do list to reflect those changes. This allows you to switch gears more gracefully and take advantage of unexpected opportunities with more confidence.

Life Balance keeps you in charge

Life Balance recognizes that you are the boss (even if no one else does). If you don't have time to enter information in full detail, it will do its best with what you tell it. It doesn't interrupt you in the middle of one thing to remind you of another.

As you work with Life Balance, you enter your goals and how important they are to you. You also add in your deadlines, the places you visit and the hours they are open. Then, just by going to the To Do List and telling Life Balance where you are, you can scan a customized list of suggested activities, ranked by importance. Start at the top of the list, or pick something farther down. Life Balance encourages good decision-making habits, but it doesn't insist. Ultimately, you are the captain of your own ship, steering your own course of action.

Life Balance provides encouragement

Life Balance encourages the idea of reviewing your accomplishments often. We know how easy it is to allow one part of your life to overwhelm the others. Life Balance can keep an eye on how you are spending your time, and gently nudge your efforts back into balance.

The pie charts in the Balance section of Life Balance not only provide a quick visual cue to the status of your activities, the information from what you get done feeds back into your To Do List to actively encourage you to achieve the results you desire.

Only you can decide what that the right balance should be for your particular goals. You may want to go all out for one goal, or spread your effort among many goals. It may take some courage to admit what you really want. Take the time to prepare yourself for victory. Use Life Balance as a reminder of your resolve to make things happen.