At some point or another, you have all felt lost and scattered thinking that your entire day is owned by others. You feel you are doing too much but it’s still not enough, why does it happen? You realize you are not able to have a work-life balance. There could be various reasons for this condition.
You have meetings, parties, job interviews, family commitments, emergencies, health crises and everything that is wreaking havoc with your careful planning. You wish you had few more hours in the day so that you could handle everything well. You wish to have a balance between your personal life and work life but know it’s not an easy task.
Avoid these destructive things that keep you from achieving a convenient work-life balance:
1. Always being the Perfectionist:
You tend to pressurize yourself more than necessary while trying to be the perfectionist. It’s important to give your best but while being the perfectionist you’re doing more work – hence not able to have a balanced work-life. In extreme cases, perfectionists can get entangled in the details of their work that the big-picture remains unfinished. Thus this is destructive and can be very frustrating to perfectionists.
2. Being Available always:
Nobody can take your help unless you help them. So don’t let anybody take unhealthy advantage of your help. As the very common quote goes:
“Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Create boundaries for doing work and stick to them. Maintain a certain time each day after which you cease doing anything related to office and focus on anything you wish to. Being too available can make you seem desperate and this only adds to letting people take undue advantage.
3. Responding immediately:
Imagine you are on a date with your wife and somebody from work pings you. You tend to respond immediately, but is it necessary? To avoid this you can do one simple thing – prioritize systematically. Schedule a time for replying to emails and your social media accounts. Create a system that is preferable for you but don’t forget to stick to it.
Give yourself the time you genuinely need so that you don’t end up being frustrated with your work. It makes you easily balance work-life.
4. Being busy doesn’t make you productive:
If you believe that just because you spend the most time at your workplace you would be credited to be more productive then let me tell you, you may be wrong. Productivity is efficiently doing things or getting them done. So your productivity depends on how you do things not how much time you spend at the office.
You need not prove your efficiency to anybody as long as you can finish your work on time.
5. Thinking about home when you’re at office – vice versa:
Doesn’t it often happen that you take office’s work home and then that you have lost that time you could spend with your family? It so happens that you don’t give your best at any of the places. You need to understand that you need to be present at home with home and family issues just as much as you need to leave those issues at home when you’re at work. People back home need to clearly be aware of the deadlines to be met at the office.
However, you also need to strike a balance where your work issues stay at work so that you can both physically and mentally be present at home.
To have a healthy work-life balance you cannot forget to eat, drink enough water and sleep – these are the basic necessities. Be smart in avoiding anything that doesn’t let you have your work-life balance.
