According to Wikipedia, Work–life balance is a concept including proper prioritizing between “work” (career and ambition) and “lifestyle” (health, pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development/meditation). This isrelated to the idea of lifestyle choice. Work-life or work-family balance refers to the extent to which an individual is able to meet the often competing demands associated with work and non-work roles.
Studies show that a poor work-life balance can result in unhealthy levels of stress, unhappiness, and even reduced productivity.
Well, here are some tips for maintaining a healthy work- life balance.
Know your priorities.
Find out if you are work centric, devoting more than the regular hours for work and compromising almost a host of other things for work. Well, if you are highly work centric; you need to shift your focus, attention for others and other priorities of yours. Just find time to make critical evaluation of yourself and grade yourself on the basis of the roles played by you or supposed to be played by you in life. Say for example as a father/mother, as a son/daughter, as a husband/wife, as a brother/sister, as a friend, as a citizen, as a neighbour, as a worker/professional. Also try and find out if you get sufficient time for exercise and relaxation, whether you eat nourishing food to keep yourself healthy. Also try and find out when you last got connected to nature, been to the beach, climbed a mountain, felt the breeze and praised a flower. Well, all you need to do here is to find out the priorities of your life and write them down. Plan and allot time to include all your priorities.
Disconnect from the unworthy
Once, you know your priorities and fit in the time slots for them, all you need to do is to stick on to those plans. This may involve shedding a lot of things which you have been doing for long and which are not on top of your priority list. Say for example most of the people have a craze for technology and are always on line. Well, to ensure your work- life balance, you need get yourself unplugged from these technologies, media and social networks, for a good portion of your time. Too much of socialisation, spending the extra minutes at cafeteria, shooting the breeze with colleagues are activities which can be curtailed.
Work Smart.
Where work can be simplified, simplify it as it enables you to pull the time out. Smart working includes automation, digitalisation, use of software solutions and applications, delegating, outsourcing, using virtual teams and instant communication over skype/hangout/Wattsapp etc. Smart works relieves you out of a lot of efforts, ensuring greater productivity and better results. People who work smarter is able to avail quality time for family without compromising on their results at work place.
Do not be a perfectionist.
You can crave well for improvement, quality and excellence, but do not be a perfectionist. Perfectionists tend to empty a lot of their time in bringing in the perfection in work and other activities they indulge in. This perfection of yours may drain a lot of your time and at the same may not add much value in the eyes of others.
Learn to say “No”
Learning to say “No” always is not a good habit. However, depending on your priorities, options and triviality of the matter, you can say “no” to a person. Saying “yes” always enables you to win people, but will erode you of your precious time. All you will earn by saying “yes” always is appreciation for your good nature, but that will be at the cost of your work-life balance and happiness.
Retire every day
People retire from work once in a life to relax. This is the common perception. However, you need to retire from your work every evening and get back to it with more energy and enthusiasm the next morning. Think as if you have got to retire from work every evening, then you will feel that your home is a better place for affection, togetherness and relaxation. Remember, every evening of yours is in your retirement home. Do not carry your work to home and home to work.
Remove the clutters of the mind.
Your physical disengagement from the work does not mean you are out of office. Having think times about office while at home and family, is not a healthy work- life balance. To remove the mess in the mind, you need to practice mindfulness through yoga or meditation.
Have your private time.
Take a slice of time out, for your passion or hobby and call it your private time. These private times fills the cup of your mind with ounces of happiness.
Outings and Vacations
Outings and vacations in the modern day life are off beat pull outs for togetherness, joy and understanding amongst family members and friends.
