For most of the working people, juggling between the demands of a career and a personal life is quite a tumultuous task, especially when the company expects more from the employees they have retained in recession.
Achieving the perfect work-life balance can often feel like an impossible goal to reach, especially if you are striving to give your hundred percent. In the present world where “do more with less” is essential, you have to efficiently manage careers and families, and be content in both of them.
The work-personal life balance varies from time to time. The right balance when you are single will change when you are married and have kids. But with small steps that you take will ensure that you can perfectly manage both with your sanity intact.
Here are the secrets to creating that perfect work and personal life balance:
- Prioritizing
This is the number one secret to achieving the work life balance. You must edit yourself professionally and personally. Prioritizing is the key to success and applies to all the industries and not just some startups where employees prioritize their tasks weekly. Mark in bold your most important things on your to-do list, so that you can know where you can start and where you must finish for a single day or for the week. When you prioritize you will stay focused on what is very important and you can reduce the unnecessary stress which comes along with the urgent focus on tasks which can wait.
- Understand what matters
Some people spend too much time working on things which do not matter. Time is most essential and valuable commodity in work or personal life, one thing which you cannot buy no matter what. So you must not waste it, focus on what matters the most for you. Works on the things which will drive the overall goals of your work at the workplace. Scrutinize your day and use every second to your maximum potential. For this you need some planning and structure. Divide your time for your personal life and work. In this catered time try to meet all the things you want to do.
- Be proactive
You must be proactive and not reactive because if you are reactive you will lose touch of what is important for you. This will cause you to fail to operate at your highest capability and it will cause you stress. To avoid this take time and effort to plan in advance and anticipate what your boss and co-workers might request and you will be prepared to multitask and you can schedule your time. When you have a planned schedule, you can tackle these tasks proactively, instead of waiting things to get to your desk, which will take your stress leaves to peaks and you will be overwhelmed and you will carry the same attitude to your home and your personal life will be disturbed because of this.
- Be more open
You have to be more open about your needs and before this you must identify what matters to you and communicate about them, you must not hide them. You cannot hide your needs and expect others to guess what will make you feel balanced and complete. If you want to finish your work faster and have dinner with your family or need a break in between your office hours, whatever your need is you must be open about it with your manager and your manager must have understand what will work and what is possible. Different jobs have different approaches, but whatever your job description is you must be open and honest about the work and life balance.
- Take a vacation once in a while
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. So if you work relentlessly on weekends, special occasions 24/7, it will affect your work and your personal life will be disturbed for sure. So once in a while you must take a vacation with your family. This will recharge you and your family will not complain about not seeing much of you, good way of managing your work and personal life. But you must vacation perfectly. Do not be glued to your computers and phone screens checking your email and working in your hotel room, spoils the whole purpose. So when you are vacationing, vacation hard and then get back to your work and you will feel energized.
- Trust your co-workers
A good team leader trusts his employees and the best employees will trust in their company’s leadership. If you trust your coworkers, in their work ethics, intellect and skills, then share the load. Though you think you need to do the entire work yourself, it is unlikely you can handle everything and are not expected to carry the total burden at the expense of your personal life. So you must collaborate on the projects, distribute work to your teammates. This will improve your work life balance very much with just a little help from your peers.
- Establish clear cut boundaries
Balancing work and personal life cannot be done if you do not form clear boundaries between the two and once you establish the boundaries you must respect them. It can be difficult in the starting but you must stick to them to develop a routine. You will always have another problem to work on or email that you have to send, but you must respect your boundaries which you have established. If you do not then you must not expect other to do so.
- Restrain yourself
Every piece of technology that you use has an off button, which you must learn to use if you want that perfect work life balance. Do not carry your mobile phone to your dining table, do not carry your work tablet to the swimming lounge when you are on vacation. Same way you must not chat online with your friend or talk on the phone with your girlfriend. When you learn to restrain yourself, you will enjoy your life and your ideal work-life balance.
