Achieving work-life balance is an art that needs mastery, just like music, dance and painting. Keeping a good work-life balance may seem like impossible to achieve, especially in the current circumstances.
The world is not the same since the coronavirus pandemic broke in. Many employees have been ordered to work from home and even small business owners are taking this route.
You might think that achieving a healthy work-life balance is easy when you are working from home. Unfortunately, this is not always be the case.
Here are our top 5 tips for a healthy work-life balance.
Prioritise Your Tasks
Your to-do list may have 100 tasks on it, which can cause confusion and anxiety. Be sure to prioritise all your to-do tasks into the following four categories:
- Important and urgent.
- Urgent, but not important.
- Important, but not urgent.
- Neither important, nor urgent.
Plan Your Time for the Long-Term
Create a timeline of your tasks and activities. You can use Word or Excel to keep track of these tasks or better still, use an online management tool such as Asana.
Put dates at the top and activities along the side. Break every task into components.
Be sure to include family and personal commitments such as birthday parties, holidays, dental appointment – so you are fully aware of the days you can’t work on.
Unplug
From programmes that make work a breeze to telecommuting, technology has eased our lives in several ways. However, the constant accessibility can also make it seem like the workday never ends. So unplug from work when you are at home or with family. Turn off phone notifications when you’re at home. Avoid texting when you’re at your kid’s soccer game. Avoid sending emails when hanging out with the family.
Make Time for Exercise
Do you find yourself cancelling your visits to the gym or yoga class or the evening run because of work? Don’t take the easy way out. Be tough on yourself, stick to your schedule and take time out for exercise. Make sure you give your health as much a priority as you do for your clients and work. A healthy body equals a fresh mind. That means, you will be efficient at your work and complete tasks quicker.
Be Realistic
At the end of your workday, take a few minutes to self-introspect and analyse your day. Ask questions like what worked in your favour, what did not, what went wrong, how it could have been avoided and how it can be fixed. I like to review and improve my processes so that I can work as efficiently as possible.
Conclusion
Work-life balance is all about prioritising your personal life as much as your work. I hope these five tips can help achieve the balance you seek.