Many research studies have pointed out the importance of maintaining a healthy work life balance. This simply means that you should value both your professional and personal life without allowing one to impinge upon the other.
A healthy work life balance not only helps you to maintain a better mental health but also to enjoy good physical health and wellbeing.
Moreover, it increases your productivity and you eventually become a more rounded individual. You can achieve this by giving importance to both work and life by clearly understanding what is important for you at the moment.
Here are a few tips and tricks you can consider to keep up a better and healthy work life balance.
Read Also: 15 Tips To Ensure Better Work-Life Balance
1. Better Time Management
Time is a valuable commodity in anyone’s life. So you should learn how to you use it wisely and effectively whether you are at home or office.
Managing time gives you enough free time where you can easily fill out the gaps you made in both professional and personal life.
Mismanagement of time results in spending extra hours in office which takes away the time you kept for personal things and vice versa.
2. Prioritize Your Life
A better version of time management is prioritizing what you actually want to do in your personal life and work space.
Understand what actually matters to you the most and prioritize your daily schedule accordingly. Whether you are at work or home, proper communication is important to let people who care know about what is bothering you or lacking in you.
Sometimes your life partner or your colleague can help you to sort it out for you.
3. Keep a Line Between Professional and Personal Life
It is seriously important to draw a line between your office work and personal life. Plan your day accordingly so that you don’t need to take the pending office work to home.
Similarly there might be lot of personal problems bothering you but make sure that you don’t take it to office which affects your productivity at work.
4. Set Career Goals
A sense of satisfaction is what everyone matters at the end of a day’s work at office. So make sure that you have set clear goal for your professional life and you are working towards it.
A vision for yourself and forward thinking can help you stay positive and motivated. The energy you get from such sense of satisfaction at work can easily reflect on the happiness you can give to your loved ones at home.
5. Set Personal Goals
Similar to setting professional goals, it is important for an individual to set personal goals too. It can be about maintaining your fitness level or owning a house, buying a car or making a family.
It is just one life and you have to enjoy all aspects of life to experience it to the fullest. So you also spend some time to work towards your personal goals along with success at work.
6. Prioritize Family after Office Hours
It is important to prioritize your work during the working hours. Similarly, it is important to prioritize your family matters after the working hours.
Whether it is a commitment to your parents or a promise to your kids, don’t mess it up with your office work when you are at home. Your loved ones will badly need your presence always rather than the money you earn for them.
7. Get Better at Email
The official emails are always a crucial element that kills off the productivity at work. One should know to manage and review it efficiently.
Be sure to respond to emails in a timely manner but see that you don’t keep on checking it every time that may take away the focus in the present work.
Also reduce the rate at which you respond to official emails when you are at home unless it is that urgent.
8. Embrace the Off Button of Gadgets
Every gadget that is available today comes with an off button which simply means that you can switch it off when not needed.
In fact, staring at a screen for more than 7 to 8 hours a day can affect your eyes, your mood and energy. So take enough effort to minimize its usage after your office time to have some quality time at home.
9. Meet clients halfway
You don’t need to always promise clients to meet them at their office if it is far from your place. Better ask them to meet at half way at a coffee shop or similar place which helps you to minimize the time you spend for official travels.
You can use that saved time productively to finish off the other work early or you may use it to take a small break between the tight schedules.
10. Maintain Healthy Eating Habits
You should always give importance to your diet even if the office and meeting schedules are too tight. Don’t skip the meals and minimize the intake of junk food which you normally choose to save time on the go.
Plan the day accordingly so that you can eat well and prefer homely food whenever possible. Make sure you drink at least 8 glasses of water every day.
11. Get Enough Sleep
Getting a regular good night sleep is important to earn the energy for the next day. Don’t sit overnight to complete your pending works which indirectly affects the productivity of your next day.
It also takes away the quality time you spend at home which can even lead to mood swings and energy loss. Some people choose to sleep less during working days and sleep more during weekends or holidays which affects the sleep cycle.
12. Don’t Skip Regular Exercise
Just like proper sleep and healthy food habits, maintaining your fitness level is always important. So manage your daily schedule so that you spend at least 30 minutes every day at gym or just take a half an hour walk in the morning or evening.
It gives you lot of energy which eventually helps you in being productive at work and you can keep away from unwanted illness.
13. Take time to make time
It would be wise to spend some time to make time. This simply means to take away some time from your schedule to chart your days effectively so that you end up saving time and being more productive.
You may even use time trackers to see the areas in which you are wasting time and work to make it better every time. The time allocation can be made depending on what you actually want to do by skipping the time consuming unimportant stuffs.
14. Manage your mind
Take some time out from your busy schedule to manage your mind when anxiety, fear or self doubt creeps in. Choose to go for meditation or yoga classes or do it at your home.
Manage some time for reading which can keep your mind relaxed. You may also read business books which give you tips and strategies to manage the time efficiently.
In fact, better knowledge about your work makes it easy for you to handle your work efficiently.
15. Take Care of Yourself
It is always important to get some ‘me’ time to do the stuffs you enjoy. Make some time for your hobbies & passions when you can feel light and relaxed.
This helps you to unwind in between the tough sessions which eventually make you more focussed and driven.
16. Take Enough Breaks
Don’t make your schedules too tight so that you end up being unproductive at the end of the day. So make sure that you take enough breaks in between, sit back and relax, have a cup of coffee or have a talk with your colleague.
This makes you refreshed and relaxed which eventually makes you productive. Take some days off from your work and go for holidays with your loved ones which give the energy back to you.
17. Bring Home to Office
Similarly, organizations have to take proper measures to see that the employees have a healthy work life balance. Companies can help the employees to bring home to office to help them achieve this goal.
They can arrange a child care centre to take care of their kids during the office hours. Or they can arrange get together and events to celebrate milestones or special events when employees can bring their family too.
Conclusion
So don’t ever shy away from getting some personal time for you and take lots of relaxing breaks. At the same time make sure that you are not compromising the quality of work you deliver in your work space.
Make sure that you spend quality time with your loved ones but see that no important office meetings are missed. See that you follow your own passions and maintain good exercise, food and sleep habits.
However, you may not be successful always to correctly balance the work and personal life. There might be some rare situations when you should give some additional weightage to certain aspects in both personal and professional life.
However, these tips might surely help you to maintain an overall good work life balance.