In today’s fast-paced society, many feel that all they do is work without time left for family, friends, and leisure activities. While we are grateful that we have jobs, struggling to keep up with heavy workloads, other career challenges, and personal lives can be overwhelming.
We tend to get so caught up in the rush that we forget to care for ourselves. As our stress increases, various physical and mental health issues, such as decreased immunity, poor concentration, irritability, depression, high blood pressure, and more, can occur.
Work-life balance is one of the most important considerations for your quality of life. The path to well-being is finding the balance between work and personal life. The following are several strategies to help reduce stress and achieve the desired balance.
Practice Self-Care: Boost your ability to cope with daily stressors by eating healthy foods, staying active, and getting sufficient sleep. Research shows a healthy lifestyle benefits physical and mental health, such as reduced stress and depression and a more robust immune system.
You deserve a Break: Take small breaks throughout the day to clear your mind and restore energy, whether at work or in your personal life.
Create a Daily To-Do List: A practical approach to finding balance in your life is to have a plan or to-do list for each day. This helps you to be organized and control your personal and work tasks.
Create your task list the night before to give yourself a roadmap for the upcoming day. Keep your work tasks and personal tasks separate to help foster a distinction between the two. Be sure to keep your lists realistic and don’t include unimportant tasks. Otherwise, you’ll race throughout the day trying to get everything done, causing more stress and disbalance.
Practice Time Management: As you execute your daily to-do list, you’ll likely encounter interruptions and other activities that take focus away from achieving your goals. The following are several time management techniques that will help you be in control of your limited time.
• Don’t Multitask: When you work on multiple tasks at the same time, you may end up wasting valuable time. Multitasking makes focusing on a single task challenging since your focus is split among several tasks.
• Control Interruptions: Prevent distractions by silencing your phone and checking emails only 1 – 2 times daily. Carve out 1 – 2 hours daily where you have no interruptions. Let those who need to know that this is your boundary and why.
Communicate: When you feel that the demands and volume of work are too overwhelming, talk calmly and professionally with your employer. Your employer must be aware of your concerns to address them. If you have thoughts on a solution, share them.
Conclusion
OnePoll surveyed 2,000 employed Americans to find their reasons for quitting their jobs. The result is that 55% left their careers to find a better work/life balance.
We understand that ongoing work/life stress can impact our well-being physically and mentally. Aside from finding a different career opportunity, there are positive steps that we can take to improve the work/life balance.
Living a healthy lifestyle is essential to improve coping abilities and decrease stress. Taking short breaks throughout the day helps us to refresh and clear our minds.
Creating a daily plan for work and personal tasks and time management allows us to take control of achieving our goals. Communication with colleagues and leadership is key, as well as taking control by reducing interruptions and eliminating multitasking.
Regularly practicing the preceding strategies can lead to good habits that will help you find a balance between your personal and professional life.
