5 Steps to create a Better Work/Life Balance
Balancing work and life is a never-ending struggle. You’d think that technology would make it easier, but connecting digitally has only made it easier for our bosses and clients to reach us out of the office. It’s as though we have no barrier between our personal and professional lives anymore. According to the OECD Better Life Index , an average 11% of workers complain of working fifty or more hours a week.
You might be thinking, ‘Well, it happens. We all have bills and need to live somehow. Sometimes you just have to take on more work.’ But we all know there’s more to life than that: friends, family, hobbies, personal health, SLEEP. We can’t just make it through the week; we need make it through alive with our sanity intact. So, how exactly do we do that?
While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to fix everyone’s work/life balance, below are five tips crucial to taming this ever-growing beast.
Step #1: Define Your Priorities
You need to know what you want before you can go after it. Otherwise, you’ll just be letting life happen to you. If you have a manager that demands overtime, you’ll soon find yourself buried in it. They’ll ask once, and you’ll accept without a second thought because you don’t know what else you might want to do. Then the same thing the next time. And the next. And the next. Soon, they’ll just assume that you’ll take it if they offer it. You might come to realize that there are a lot of things that are much more important to you, but it’s often too late by that point. You’re dedicated and will find it difficult to back out or carve out new time for something else.
To avoid this, you need know your goals. You must be clear about what’s most important to you so that can make sure that there’s time for it. Do you want to focus on your health this year? Maybe you want to start going to the gym or cooking classes three times a week. Define this ahead of time. Make it known to yourself and others what’s important to you. You might still encounter problems getting your manager to give you the right hours to make it to your weekly healthy cooking class, but if you know ahead of time exactly what you want, you can have it in mind and make the time for it, no matter the effort it takes.
Step #2: Get a Wall Planner
Wall planners are super easy to get. Amazon sells them, and Google shows just about as many varieties as there are stars in the sky. You can get one for the normal year or for the academic year if you’re a student (or look after one). The point is to get a wall planner and use it to visualize your time. Put in all your commitments and time for family, personal development, detoxing from the stress, whatever is important to you. You’d be surprised at how much longer a year seems in your head than when you see it in print, especially when you try to fit in everything you need and want to do.
Step #3: Put Your Holidays First
When you’re working with this planner, you have to schedule in your holidays first. I don’t mean holidays like Christmas or New Year’s Eve, although these definitely count among those holidays. What I mean by ‘holidays’ is that time that you need to spend with your family or by yourself. This could be a religious and/or bank holiday, but it could also be your daughter’s school concert, your son’s cross-country meet, or even a ‘me day.’ It might sound backwards to put this time before work, but it’s not. Family is more important than a job, a business, a wage, any of that. So is your personal well-being, too. If you don’t firmly set aside time for all this now, it’ll escape from you far too easily.
Step #4: Set Rules for Yourself
Believe it or not, a lot of people have a hard time saying ‘no’ to new commitments. People will ask them out to coffee or dinner when they don’t have the time or their boss will pressure them to take on one project too many, and they’ll feel compelled to accept. It’s something that everyone struggles with now and then. That’s why you need set rules for yourself to avoid being overwhelmed.
Let’s say you have a problem with friends asking you to go out on weeknights a lot. Maybe restrict yourself to going out two nights during the week (Monday through Friday). So, if you already have plans to go out Tuesday and Thursday but someone wants you to go dancing Monday, you’ll either need cancel one of your other nights or tell this person no. The same goes for work. If you have a boss that likes to give you overtime, maybe you set a rule that says that you won’t work overtime more than three days a week at this job. So, if it’s Thursday’s and your boss wants you to stay past your shift but you already worked overtime Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, you’ll have to tell them no, thank you.
This will only work if you’re firm. It’ll be hard at times; people might even push back on your rejection and try to coerce you into breaking your rule. You might even be tempted to, but you can’t. If you bend once, it’s a slippery slope to ignoring your own rules all the time. I would know. I’m not great at this tip myself, but persistence is key here.
Step #5: Plan Ahead
This brings us to the most important step of all: plan ahead. Remember the wall planner from Tip #2? Here, that planner is going to be your best friend. At the start of each month, I want you to look at this calendar and see what you have planned and I don’t mean just glimpse at it. I personally use a Clever Fox planner, which I highly recommend. That’ll give you a rough idea of your deadlines and appointments, but it won’t really help you plan ahead. Instead, take some time and really consider each of your planned events for that month. More importantly, think about the time that’s left in between each appointment/deadline and what could come up. Ask yourself:
Does this month feel balanced? Should I adjust my schedule?
Can I fit in training/a night out/something else not related to work that I want to do?
Does everything look reasonable, or will I be slammed?
By looking at what you have waiting for you in the upcoming month, you won’t be caught by surprise by the approach of any of commitments. The same can be done with each new week. Just take your calendar at the start of the week and repeat the process you do each month. Do the same each night as well. The more you actively look and plan ahead, the more prepared you’ll be for what’s up ahead. Better yet, you might be able to move them around to make life less stressful.
Sometimes life makes it hard to balance the personal with the professional. You can’t plan for everything. There’ll always be emergencies, sickness, and injuries that you can’t foresee, and what’s life without some spontaneity? But the more you plan, the better prepared you’ll be. With a well-defined vision of what you want from life, the proper tools for managing that vision, and the firm attitude to stick with it, you’ll be on your way to a more beneficial work/life balance.