Read any magazine article or book about parenting and the author will advise the necessity of setting limits for children. “Set limits and stick to them,” parents are counseled. Limits create the structure and discipline that every child needs for healthy upbringing.

But for adults—especially those who tend to view other people’s needs and wants as more important than their own—setting limits is more than an exercise in discipline; it’s a vital component in good self-care.

Consider Georgia. Her calendar is filled with one family event after another. A niece’s graduation followed by a great-uncle’s 75th birthday party followed by a tea her mother planned for an old family friend. Much as she loves her family, enough is enough. After a day at work and meeting her immediate family’s needs, she has hardly any time left for herself.

And some quick tips…

• Write out your goals.
• Break down your goals into actions.
• Break down these actions into bite-sized chunks.
• Schedule these chunks into your planner.
• Follow through with action.
• Don’t give into the temptation to do the small things first just because they’re small.
• Intersperse periods of intense work with periods of recovery, even if brief.

If you want to maximize your productivity at work and balance it into the larger scheme of your life, focus is crucial. Tracy says the reason people’s lives get out of balance is not because they have too much work to do, but because they do too little work. And he means they waste too much time when they’re supposed to be working. If you have to, turn off the phone and shut down your email. You’ll find the more work you do get done, the better you feel—which motivates you to keep doing more of the same.

Nothing is perfect, sometimes you have to just do it!

Can you separate the behavior from the person?

Top athletes around the world know the value of alternating periods of intense activity and focus with periods of rest. Balancing stress and recovery is also critical in managing personal energy—and thus, productivity—in all areas of our lives.

“Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery eventually leads to burnout and breakdown,” write Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement. “Too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy and weakness.… Full engagement requires cultivating a dynamic balance between the expenditure of energy (stress) and the renewal of energy (recovery) in all dimensions.”