Work life balance: how to balance work and personal life

Balancing work and personal life is not easy. The demands of both sides are often beyond you, and you haven’t even had time to think about your own hobbies and free time. But there are 24 hours in the day, you can’t sleep, and you have to work. So how do you make sure you don’t go crazy?

Watch out for burnout

A good work-life balance brings a range of benefits, from increased productivity at work, to better physical and mental health, to deeper and better relationships with family and friends. In contrast, a disruption in the balance can lead to burnout, chronic stress, deteriorating relationships with loved ones, various illnesses and an overall decline in life satisfaction.

It’s too late to tell. It’s those mornings when you realize that you don’t get out of bed, you don’t care deeply about anything, and you don’t have any interest, energy or motivation to do anything. You’re just burnt out. In this case, professional help is needed. But we will do our best to prevent this from happening.

Start building your work-life balance step by step

Nothing falls out of the sky and you have to make your own contribution. Work-life balance takes time, effort and your imagination in the beginning. But in the end, you will reap the rewards of satisfaction, joy and energy that you can give out at work and at home.

1) Take stock of your life

Stop. Take a tablet, an Excel spreadsheet, or plain paper and pencil to do this. Whatever works for you. Make yourself a good cup of coffee or tea and don’t let anything or anyone disturb you. Take stock of your daily life. Write down everything you have to manage during your usual day. Feel free to divide your activities into “personal” and “work” columns. This will help you evaluate where you are directing most of your energy and time.

2) Do a cleanse

Choose two colors, go through all the activities you’ve written down one by one and divide them into three groups:

• the ones you don’t want to do, don’t love and belong to someone else,

• the ones you love and look forward to,

• the ones you have to do, whether you like them or not.

If the activities from the third group overlap with the second group, you’ve kind of won the lottery.

3) Set boundaries

You’re about to take the first difficult step. Choose all the tasks from the first category and start setting boundaries for yourself and your environment. This can even be about the “little things” that make a big mischief in your life. For example, you can..

• Definitively hand over the handling of some emails to an assistant.

• Stop doing work for a colleague who is just using you.

• Hand over household chores to other family members.

If you’ve been doing everything yourself up until now, maybe it’s time to draw the line and leave the trash to the kids, the vacuuming to your husband, and the dishwasher to your older offspring.

• Stop answering work calls at dinner.

• To not deal with work emails in bed at night.

• Not preparing a presentation on the weekend.

Even little things like that affect how you mix work and personal time together, take your attention away from your family and devote it to work, and show that you can’t say “no” to others or yourself.

4) Learn to say no

This brings us neatly to the next point, which is closely related to boundaries. “No” is an important word. However, many decent people feel bad about it, and the latter, in turn, misuse it to manipulate their surroundings. The word “no” has a major impact on your mental health and survival in today’s overcrowded world. If you didn’t say “no”, you’d go crazy.

So practice saying no in small ways and gradually incorporate it into all areas of your life.

• You really don’t have to do the work for your colleagues.

• You really don’t have to drive your kids to school when the bus is running.

• You really don’t have to do a presentation on Sunday night because your boss remembered it on Friday afternoon.

As they say, everything is connected. Wherever you cross your boundaries, it connects with you throughout the day across your personal and professional life.

5) Plan and organise

Effective planning balances work tasks and personal interests. To keep track of what you’ve promised to whom and what tasks await you at home and at work, we highly recommend a planner of some sort. A calendar on your mobile phone or a paper planner will work best for you.

Here, we recommend that you always have just one! Otherwise, you risk forgetting the other one, not looking at it, and uncontrollable chaos will reign again. Choose a diary that suits you and keep a record of your personal and professional activities. Scientists have proven many times that writing by hand sends the information you write down straight to your brain. This has not been proven to be the case with writing on a keyboard or on a mobile phone.

TIP: Try online help

JOBKA’s app can help you plan and organise all your work duties. It’s easy to find out when your paycheck is due, when you can take a vacation, how lunches are issued, or what meetings and meetings are taking place. This puts your work duties right in your pocket at all times.

6) Give yourself regular rest

Having a diary doesn’t mean you have to fill it to the brim. Today’s times call for a full workload, otherwise you’re a slacker and a slob. But that’s not true at all. Rest is more important than busyness.

During rest you gain strength mentally and physically. Moreover, the human brain appreciates a variety of activities where it can rest. Constant concentration and flitting from one task to another are harmful to health. Multitasking then leads to dementia in old age. So don’t overdo it with activities and instead plan to read your favourite book, have coffee on the terrace, go for a bike ride or hike in the mountains.

7) Ask for flexible working hours or work from home

Not everyone has that option. Some professions don’t allow working from home. On the other hand, most office jobs can tolerate working from home. So don’t resist it if you manage a team of people, and ask for it if you’re an employee.

Working from home has many benefits, from great savings in the company, to psychological comfort for workers, to increased efficiency and productivity, to maximum satisfaction and peace of mind. You too probably feel better when you brew a cup of your favourite coffee at home, settle down with your laptop on the patio and carry out your usual agenda from here. Compared to a sunny day when you’re cooped up in the office, you’re breathing air from the air conditioning and illuminated only by artificial fluorescent lights.

Flexible working hours have similar benefits, guaranteeing the employer that the work is completed and the number of hours worked, giving the employee the freedom to do with their time as they need. This reduces stress, increases satisfaction and helps people to tailor their day to their needs.

8) Communicate openly

No change will come on its own. So actively discuss your feelings, needs and expectations with your colleagues, boss, employees and family. Everyone naturally expects you to be available to them at all times and they throw a lot of tasks at you, but it’s impossible to accommodate everyone.

Explain to people what you need and how the lack of needs being met is draining you. After all, it is your exhaustion that most impacts those around you in the form of arguments, resignation, mistakes and unmet deadlines. In addition, your boundaries also encourage those around you to prioritize and learn to better manage their time.

Keep a balance

Even if you do everything right, from time to time you may find yourself out of balance. Indeed, an unexpected situation may require that you finish your work on a Sunday night. Or, exceptionally, you may take the kids to school and then arrive at work a little later. But this should definitely not be the rule. Also, write down all your tasks from time to time and make sure you don’t take responsibility for other people’s tasks.

Finding the right balance between work responsibilities and your personal life is not always easy, but it is crucial for your health and happiness. Flexible working hours, the ability to work from home and personal boundaries are great tools to help you with your work-life balance.