In this fast-moving world where time stops for nobody, it’s hard to balance both personal and work life. With a schedule full of deadlines and projects, one doesn’t get time to give a 100% to their social and private life. According to a survey conducted at the Harvard Business School, “94% of 1,000 working professionals said they put in 50 or more hours a week, with nearly half that group turning in more than 65 hours a week.” And these numbers don’t account for the hours spent checking and updating their inboxes and schedules, while outside office.
People tend to prioritize work over their family and friends. Being goal-oriented and career focused is a great thing (that not many people are), but you need to know the significance of your “alone time” as well. You need to cherish every second of your time ‘off-work’. While you are struggling at work trying to impress you boss and achieving those deadlines, you miss out on a thing called “life”.
Here are four tips that will help you achieve a balance:
Take a note of the time:
If you wish to attain a balance of time devoted to both your personal and professional life, you need to know how much time you are dedicating to each sector. Maintain a simple log of the time you spend doing work activities and the time you spend with your family, friends and yourself. You have to consider both workdays as well as holidays. Using the data collected, categorise the time spent doing those particular activities. You can now clearly see how much time you give to your work and to yourself. Looking at your time-log, you need to categorise each task into urgent/not urgent and important/not important. Now that you understand how you spend your time, create a “plan” for your ideal workday and holiday. Focus on prioritising and creating a schedule that satisfies both, your career and your “peace of mind”.
Once this “dream-plan” is formed and you start to adhere to it, you will notice a positive change in both your lifestyle and your “level of happiness”.
You can only choose three:
Randi Zuckerberg has some great advice on how to balance both work-life and personal-life. She says, “In order to set myself up for success, I know I can only realistically do three things well every day. So, every day when I wake up, I think to myself: Work. Sleep. Family. Friends. Fitness. Pick Three. I can pick a different three tomorrow, and a different three the following day. But today, I can only pick three. As long as I wind up picking everything over the long run, then I’m balancing my imbalance. It’s solving the great entrepreneur’s dilemma.”
If you think about it, adopting a lifestyle like this can prove to be very efficient and time saving. All you need to do is, at the start of your day you just have to make a simple choice. But try not to get lazy and skip those cardio sessions.
Quit multi-tasking:
Make a note to yourself, “No more multi-tasking”. If you take these four words seriously, your world will change drastically. This rule shouldn’t just apply to your work-life, you have to implement this into your “off-work life” as well. When at work, focus entirely on the one thing that you are currently doing. When at the dinner table, focus on your family. Keep all “distractions’ aside.
Once you learn to focus on one thing at a time, you are able to achieve better results, both career-wise and with your social-life. Time management and prioritising stuff are important aspects of a happy and satisfied life. Once you have them both sorted, a balance is struck.
A little relaxation goes a long way:
If you find yourself to be particularly stressed out all the time, your work-life balance needs fixing. Don’t just assume that your lifestyle requires huge and drastic changes for you to bring about a balance in your life. A random change in your busy schedule can do no harm. Try out a personal hobby that you’ve always wanted to practice. It could be as simple as doodling. But the important thing here is that you have to dedicate some time of your day, for that hobby. These little changes go a long way.
Another suggested change to your work-life is ‘leave office early one night per week’. Focus more on yourself and your family rather than those deadlines. A minute change to you schedule will help you achieve the needed peace on those hectic days.
As Laura Stack so greatly puts it, “You have to make a little time for the things that ignite your joy." You must consider the significance of the littler things in life, because it is, they that help maintain the balance in life.
Turacoz Foundation believes that striking a balance with work-life and personal-life should be priority number one of every working individual. We believe that for a happy and healthy life, one needs to understand the importance of time-management and prioritisation of all (work and personal) activities. Your career is important, but so is your social life.
Why do we work? Why do we struggle so much for money? The answer is simple, we do it for self-satisfaction and for the happiness of our families and ourselves. But what good is that money if it doesn’t serve its cause. What good is that money if it doesn’t give happiness and satisfaction in return. We urge the people to chase happiness and the feeling of fulfilment.
If you wish to reach out to us, click here.