Finding the Right Work-Life Balance

“Work-life balance” is a phrase that gets thrown about a lot. But it can mean different things to different people.

Regardless of this, it doesn’t need to be something that’s impossible to achieve.

Here are our top tips for ensuring you can retain a healthy work-life balance.

Everyone lives different lives and has different needs, so what work-life balance means to your colleague might differ to what it should mean for you. It’s important to question what does work-life balance mean for you?

• Do you prefer to work to a certain routine so it’s easier to schedule other activities outside of work?
• Does this mean you can undertake flexible or hybrid working practises?
• Does working in a particular environment or at certain times/ to a certain schedule allow you to be more productive?
• Or do you define work-life balance with what you do with your spare time?

Remember – this is about maximising your time both inside and outside of work, maintaining your productivity and motivation during work and reducing your stress, so that you can enjoy your time outside of work too.

You may have to play around with what works best for you. Some people believe that working remotely would make it easier to achieve work-life balance. However, remote work can present its own challenges for many. Working outside of the office can often lead to multitasking, distractions, and difficulty keeping strict hours – blurring the lines between work and home life can be difficult for understanding work-life balance.

Healthier behaviours can support your sense of personal well-being. These could be behaviours like improving your sleep schedule, staying active or improving your eating habits. But those habits can be difficult to establish.

If you’re trying to make changes to your lifestyle to ensure you can achieve your ideal work-life balance, then start off with small changes.

Small tweaks to your routine are likely to be easier to manage then drastically changing several aspects of your whole routine in one go. Small changes overtime also increase the likelihood that good habits will stick.

Start by assessing what negative behaviours might be preventing you from a healthier routine and tackle them in increments. For example, should you be going to bed an hour earlier each night so you can get enough sleep to have enough energy to be more productive? Start by going to bed 20 minutes earlier than you usually do, and gradually increase this by 20 minutes every couple of nights until you hit your goal time.

Whether it’s something you do in the morning before work to make you feel prepared for your day ahead, or something you do after work in order to wind down, finding the time to do something you enjoy outside of work can improve your productivity, happiness and stress levels. Ensuring you allocate time to this is important to ensure you achieve your ideal work-life balance.

Research shows that on average 60% of employees check their work emails while on holiday, despite the fact that 80% say they would rather switch off completely while on holiday as opposed to staying on top of what’s going on in the office.

Despite this, only 5% of workers believe their boss would ‘definitely’ expect them to check their emails, with 82% of employees believing their managers would either ‘probably not’ or ‘definitely not’ expect them to be in touch during their holiday. This suggests pressure to check-in at work isn’t necessarily from bosses and managers, but instead seems to be self-inflicted.

“I don’t have enough time” is a common phrase a lot of us are guilty of saying –  despite this, many of us can find ourselves sat in front of the TV scrolling through phones in our ‘spare time’ that we supposedly claim not to have.

First, you need to identify what’s most important in your life. List things that you want to dedicate your time to (even if you haven’t been doing so in the past). This list will differ for everyone depending on what is most important to you, so make sure it truly reflects your priorities, not someone else’s.

After this, you should be able to draw firm boundaries which will allow you to devote quality time to these high-priority people and activities.

From here, you will find it much easier to determine what time-wasting activities you need to cut down on.

If email or internet surfing sends you into a never-ending time-wasting spiral, then you need to establish some rules to keep you on task. This could involve turning off email notifications and only replying in batches during limited times each day, setting time constraints on certain apps on your phone, leaving your phone in do-not-disturb mode, and making sure you don’t keep it right next to your bed, so you’re not tempted to check messages right before bed or first thing in the morning.

Work-life balance isn’t only intended to cause people to consider what they do outside of their job. It’s also important to make sure you’re working in a role at a company that you enjoy, and that leaves you feeling fulfilled and productive.

At T2M Resourcing, we have a diverse range of clients and candidates. This allows us to find the best match for both clients looking to grow their companies, and candidates seeking a fulfilling career.

Contact us today for a confidential discussion about your next steps and what you wish to get out of your next role.