Whether you’re an employee, a boss, a student, or just someone with plenty of responsibilities, it can be hard to balance your work and your personal life. The demands of your job and life may conflict with one another, one is more stressful than the other, or maybe it’s difficult to manage both at the same time. Achieving the perfect balance, however, is important if you want to succeed and live a happy life (Susanto et al., 2022). Here are some tips on how you can successfully attain work-life balance.
Apply the Skills You’ve Gained Across Roles
Your many skills don’t need to be exclusively used in their respective role. Just as your work and life can enrich you in their own ways, you can use everything you’ve learned to better handle your roles (Lee & Sirgy, 2018; Zheng et al., 2015). For example, let’s say you’re a parent working in customer service. You’ve become more patient from dealing with difficult customers, so you’re able to be more patient with your child. Conversely, you’ve learned empathy from trying to understand your child, so now you can empathize more with customers to serve them better.
Allocate More Energy to Satisfying Roles
Not all your roles will make you happy or help you grow as a person, such as a high-stress job or an unhappy relationship. In such cases, invest more of your energy in those that benefit you more and make you happy. For example, put more effort in developing your relationships with family if work is stressful. While doing so may not reduce the demands of your job, the positive feelings and perks you gained from your relationships can spillover into your job which can help you cope with it (Lee & Sirgy, 2018).
Set Boundaries Between Work and Life
If you’re going through stress or trouble in either your work or life, one way to keep them balanced is to make sure they don’t encroach on each other. Keep matters between work and life separated by dedicating times and spaces for each of them (Haddon & Hede, 2009; Lee & Sirgy, 2018). For example, if work is causing you stress, keep work-related matters in your office and try not to go overtime. Don’t bring work home and don’t discuss it at home. Additionally, only respond to emails during work hours.
Change How You See Your Roles
Being too critical or too negative of yourself and your roles can pressure and discourage you. For example, if you think that work is the be-all and end-all, then you may push yourself to work harder at the cost of your personal life and well-being. Adjust how much you value your roles and have a positive outlook so you can manage your expectations and feel more optimistic towards them (Haddon & Hede, 2009; Zheng et al., 2015). Give more importance to the roles that make you happier and see them as opportunities for growth rather than a burden.
Form Healthy, Supportive Relationships
Your relationships with others can help achieve work-life balance. People such as your friends, family, romantic partner, coworkers, and supervisors can support you when you’re stressed and help you manage your roles (Gautam & Jain, 2018; Haddon & Hede, 2009). For example, if you have good relationships at your workplace, then you can work more smoothly with them and have less arguments at work. If you have good relationships within your personal life, you have people to talk to about your troubles and to have fun with during your free time.
Use a Planner or Journal to Get Organized
When work piles up or you have many personal plans, then it can be more difficult to handle them all. Try to get organized and keep track of everything by using a planner or journal. Use it to set your goals, rank your priorities, and manage your time (Haddon & Hede, 2009). Doing so can make it easier to comply with and balance the demands of your roles.
Take Time for Leisure
At the end of the day, maintaining work-life balance can be draining, especially if they burn you out. It is important to take some time for yourself regularly, whether it be a couple of minutes within the day, or an entire weekend dedicated to yourself. Do relaxing or enjoyable activities like watching shows, playing sports, doing your hobbies, or going on a trip. Leisure time is the time for you to rejuvenate yourself and release the stress from work and life (Haddon & Hede, 2009; Zheng et al., 2015)
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References:
Gautam, I., & Jain, S. (2018). A study of work-life balance: Challenges and solutions. International Journal of Research in Engineering, 198-217. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333456881_A_STUDY_OF_WORK-LIFE_BALANCE_CHALLENGES_AND_SOLUTIONS
Haddon, B., & Hede, A. (2009). Work-life balance: In search of effective strategies. Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management Annual Conference. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272623357_Work-life_balance_In_search_of_effective_strategies
Lee, D. J., & Sirgy, M. J. (2018). What do people do to achieve work-life balance? A formative conceptualization to help develop a metric for large-scale quality-of-life- surveys. Social Indicators Research, 138, 771-791. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1673-6
Susanto, P., Hoque, M. E., Jannat, T., Emely, B., Zona, M. A., & Islam, M. A. (2022). Work-life balance, job satisfaction, and job performance of SMEs employees: The moderating role of family-supportive supervisor behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 906876. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.906876
Zheng, C., Molineux, J., Mirshekary, S., & Scarparo, S. (2015). Developing individual and organisational work-life balance strategies to improve employee health and wellbeing. Employee Relations, 37(3), 354–379. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-10-2013-0142
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