How to Create a Work-Life Balance? Finding the perfect balance between personal and professional life is one of the key pieces to enjoying a good quality of life. But what does this mean and what can we do to achieve it? We tell you everything in detail.
What is Personal and Professional Balance: Definition
The expression “balance between work and personal life” basically refers to a satisfactory management between the hours you work and the hours you enjoy in your private life. So that there is not a great imbalance, your thing is to spend enough time on both aspects. Give your best in the company and organize the rest of your time to do what you like and feel like doing. The personal and professional balance is essential to enjoy well-being in your day to day.
Why is the Balance Between Professional and Personal Life Important?
Finding the perfect work-life balance is critical to mental health. Suffering long-term professional stress can lead to some other problem, such as sleep disorders or the appearance of mental illness.
Let’s see if this situation sounds familiar to you: you leave the company at 8:00 p.m., have a quick beer with your colleagues, and when you return home, you have to prepare a meeting for the next day at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. You had planned to train and call your parents, but in the end you don’t get to everything with these crazy schedules and leave the things that bring you well-being for another day. ring a bell? If so, you’ll need to rethink time management.
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People who focus the most on their profession tend to put sports, family and friendships aside and, consequently, tend to neglect their personal needs.
Every worker knows how stressful it can be to work in a company. For many employees of companies around the world, stress is their daily bread. If it is short-term stress, it can be extremely positive: it increases cortisol levels, improves productivity and favors concentration. However, we must be aware when the professional and personal balance is destabilized and not be afraid to talk to human resources to find a solution to that problem that is bothering you. After all, having each worker happy ends up benefiting all companies. There is no universal rule about how many hours we should dedicate to work or how much free time we should have at least.
How is your Personal-Professional Balance Going?
Give yourself the opportunity to think about your situation and see where your balance is. In your case, you may enjoy a perfect balance, but sometimes the workload in organizations is so colossal that it increases without us even realizing it.
We suggest that you ask yourself the following questions and answer them honestly:
- Does your profession stress you out?
- Do you feel that you are up to the professional demands in your company? Or maybe you work too much or, conversely, not enough?
- Do you spend enough time with your friends and family?
- Do you have enough moments just for you?
- What helps you disconnect? Do you do it often?
- What do you think about when you wake up in the morning? Are you dying to start the day or are you wondering how you are going to do everything you have pending?
- Can you totally disconnect after spending the whole day at the company or on days off?
- Are you convinced that no project succeeds when you are not involved? Or do you trust your team to handle the relevant task?
- Does your work give you satisfaction?
- Can you forget about your phone for a day without worrying about missing something?
How to create your Work- Life Balance Plan
The concept of professional and personal balance is clear: it consists of feeling harmony and satisfaction in what we do. One of the important steps is to gain awareness and do your part. For this, we have made a selection of 11 tips that will help you to create a successful work-life balance plan.
Tip #1: Ask yourself why you work.
Whether you are self-employed or work for a company, ask yourself exactly why you do what you do. Do you work for conviction, for your own personal growth or simply to earn money and be able to afford a wonderful vacation? All the reasons are of course legitimate. Those who are passionate about their profession and see it as an opportunity for personal growth will be more satisfied when it comes to investing so much time dedicating themselves to their profession. It is up to you to tell yourself honestly what your situation is.
Tip #2: Define your priorities.
What is the most important thing to you in life? What makes you happy and allows you to truly feel yourself? Who are the people you like to be with and why? Do you have time to dedicate yourself to all this? Or maybe all the work you do now will be offset by vacations later to spend more time with friends and family in the future?
Set your priorities based on your answers. If your professional career is number 1 on the priority list, perfect. However, it’s still important to spend time with the people and activities you love the most. Plan your work week taking into account other important activities in your day to day, such as playing sports, seeing your parents or just relaxing and doing nothing. Or maybe those beer afternoons with a small group of co-workers or that meeting at 7:00 p.m. are more important to you. Up to you.
Tip #3: Figure out how to improve something and do what you can to make it happen.
What is the ideal balance for you? Do you think your life enjoys harmony? Or maybe you’re at a point where it’s still not quite perfect but satisfying? If you feel this way, congratulations!
If you haven’t reached this point yet, what do you think you could change to get there? Look at both the time you dedicate to work and leisure. Perhaps you can reduce the hours you spend in the office each week, try to be more efficient, see what options they give you in human resources or rethink your career path. Regarding your personal life, what could you modify? You may feel like changing something externally, like doing more workouts or eating healthier, or maybe it’s worth rethinking your outlook on life, your beliefs, or the way you handle the most stressful moments.
Tip #4: Improve time management.
Be as efficient as possible during the time you work. Plan in advance what to do the next day and prioritize what you really want to achieve. Setting daily goals helps prevent frustration and stress.
Set realistic tasks on your agenda and give yourself a margin of error in case your expectations are not met and your plan does not turn out as you had planned. This will help you see right away if something is too big for you and you can call for help before your balance falls apart.
Tip #5: Identify what is wasting your time.
This is one of the decisive steps on the road to a better work-life balance. Once again, you have to look closely at your work and private life: What meetings can you afford not to attend? Do you really have to read each and every email you receive? How much time do you spend on social media? How many family gatherings do you go to just to please others? Do you get too distracted from what you planned to do with all the messages you receive in the insatiable WhatsApp groups?
Tip #6: Find out what fills you with energy.
In what areas are you a machine? What professional tasks do you like the most and correspond to your position? At what time of day are you super productive? Try to focus attention on the answers to these questions and fully master these areas.
The same with moments of leisure. What feels luxurious and relaxes you? What makes your body release a healthy dose of endorphins? When you have discovered all this, dedicate the time it deserves to these activities.
Tip #7: Be flexible.
Although it is recommended to distinguish between professional and personal life, it is not necessary that you always take it literally. Have you finished all the pending tasks at 12:00 and you know that you won’t receive the rest of the project until 17:00? Well, if you can, take the afternoon off instead of wasting time in the office. Do you know full well that your workday is over, but that if you answer an email after dinner, you can really disconnect? Well, do it in a moment and you forget.
Tip #8: Take care of friendships outside of the office.
Fostering team spirit is extremely important, and getting along with other company employees makes going to work more enjoyable. But normally you already see each other 40 hours a week and, when a few employees go clubbing, the labor issue inevitably ends up occupying almost the entire conversation. Better take the opportunity to distract yourself and see other people to change scenery a bit.
Tip #9: Pay attention to your work-life-sleep balance.
So far we have only talked about doing things, but doing nothing and sleeping is also positive. A restful sleep serves as the basis of work productivity and relaxation in free time. Find out how many hours of sleep you really need to rest and try to get enough sleep.
Tip #10: Plan the moments of rest.
Do you usually work overtime? Do you stress even in leisure time? If so, try to consciously allow yourself moments of rest: decide what time you will stop working and stick to it. Mark in your diary the training sessions at fixed and immovable times. And dedicate moments or days of the week in which you do not have any personal or professional commitment.
Tip #11: Eat healthy.
We strongly believe in healthy mens in a healthy body. And it is that eating a healthy and balanced diet feels great to us, because it improves our physical condition while we enjoy the food. Try our recipe ideas to bring healthy food to the office.