A good work-life balance is important for improving your mental and physical health. Work is a big part of our lives, but it’s easy to let it take over too much. If you feel like you’re constantly connected to your job and it’s taking a toll on your personal life, try some of the tips in this article to have a better work-life balance.
Tips for Maintaining a Good Work-Life Balance
Schedule time to disconnect
If you’re the type of person who still checks work emails and team chats when you’re off the clock, try scheduling time to completely disconnect yourself. You can do this by simply putting your phone in another room when you’re at home, or even shutting it off completely for a few hours after work.
Get some exercise
Exercising is some time you can focus all your attention on something completely different from your job. It doesn’t matter whether you go to the gym, do yoga at home, or go for a walk — just pick a physical activity you like and try to do it for at least 30 minutes or so every day. Exercise has all kinds of other benefits for your mental and physical health, too!
Merge your calendars
If you use multiple calendars to keep track of work and personal items, your work calendar might end up taking center stage. Merging your calendars into one reminds you to take time for personal things, too. Here’s how you can do it using an app called Spike: https://www.spikenow.com/blog/productivity/how-to-merge-google-calendars/
Spike also has tons of other great features that can help you be more productive and efficient at work, which can contribute to a better work-life balance. For example, it turns your emails into chats, making it easier and faster to read and respond to them.
Delegate tasks
Think about work-related tasks that you could save time on by delegating them to someone else who might not have as big of a workload as you. This can also be beneficial for the other person because they might get to learn how to do something new that can help them out in their career.
For instance, if you find you’re working late because you have so many reports to send out, train one of your colleagues on how to do them and delegate the task to them, so you can get off work on time.
Go on a vacation
Vacations are a great opportunity to disconnect from work, relax, and have new experiences that enrich your personal life. So, make sure to use up all those vacation days you’ve been accumulating and go somewhere you’ve been wanting to visit, whether it’s a tropical beach or a cabin in the mountains.
You might be hesitant to take a vacation because you’re afraid your work will pile up. Don’t let this stop you from going on vacation — the business won’t collapse because you took your much-deserved time off!
Make time for your relationships
One of the biggest problems of having a bad work-life balance is that it hurts your relationships with friends and family. If you’re constantly working and thinking about work, you aren’t spending quality time with the people you care about.
Make an effort to schedule get-togethers or dates with your friends, family, and significant other. Your job or career can change at any time, and chances are many of the people you work with will fade into memory, but your loved ones will always be there for you. Spending time with them is key to having a good work-life balance.
Set work boundaries
To have full control of your life and schedule, it’s important to set boundaries for work. You can decide not to check work emails or chat messages after a certain hour or on weekends, or decide to turn off your laptop and put it away as soon as you’ve put in your hours for the day to avoid the temptation to keep working.
Once you decide on the appropriate boundaries, communicate them to your team members. For example, you can just say something like: “hey, just to let you know, I’ll respond to any messages I receive after 6 pm in the morning. So, if you have any urgent requests or questions, please try to send them to me by 5 pm or so.”
What Are the Benefits of a Healthy Work-Life Balance?
A good work-life balance has been shown to improve your mental and physical health and lead to better personal relationships, and can even make you more productive at work. Taking time for yourself to do things other than work resets your brain, so you’re ready to refocus the next day again and less likely to make mistakes due to being overworked.
The tips mentioned above are a great place to start improving your work-life balance. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a “perfect” work-life balance, but by making small changes, you can start to notice all kinds of benefits in your personal life.