14 Great Tips to Help You with Your Work Life Balance
Whether you’ve just started your career or you’ve been at your job for years, finding time to decompress is crucial. We’ve all heard that work life balance is essential to our health and well-being, but what can you do to maintain that balance? Below you’ll find our favorite tips to help you get the most out of both work and home life.
14 Great Tips to Help You with Your Work Life Balance
1. Wake Up Early
It may seem relaxing to hit the snooze button before work and get in five or ten extra minutes of sleep, but waiting until the last minute to get out of bed can do more harm than good. Getting up early has many significant benefits and can jump-start your day.
By getting up even just thirty minutes early, you treat yourself with kindness. You open up a portion of time in your day that doesn’t have anything already scheduled. These extra minutes can be the perfect time to practice a little bit of self-care, dedicate time to a hobby, or even catch up on some reading.
Additionally, by waking up early, you inherently have more time to prepare for your day both mentally and physically. You can take time choosing what you want to wear, showering, and getting ready to go. Taking a little bit longer in the morning can help you feel fresh and prepared for the day at work ahead of you.
2. Have a Solid Morning Routine
On top of getting up early, it can be beneficial to have a solid morning routine. Morning routines have proved time and time again to be an excellent tool for busy people. And the best part is that what you choose to include in your routine is entirely up to you. What’s most important here is consistency.
Doing the same thing each morning might sound like a bore, but it will free up mental space and help you to feel more balanced throughout your day. Also, you can use your morning routine as a time to dedicate to cultivating a healthy lifestyle so that you can feel better in all aspects of your life.
3. Schedule Your Downtime
A critical key to cultivating a high-quality work life balance is to schedule downtime for yourself. Even the most dedicated professionals need time to rest and restore their minds and bodies. Try and get a little bit of downtime built into every day to reap the most benefits but at the very least schedule downtime for yourself every week.
By blocking out time in your weekly schedule to sit down and decompress from your work responsibilities, you’ll feel refreshed and more attentive. Scheduling downtime can also lead to more creativity and less mental fatigue.
4. Keep Your Home Tidy
To fully relax and decompress when you are at home instead of work, it is essential to keep your home tidy. Coming home to a cluttered house every day can lead to unnecessary stress. More importantly, coming home to clutter will make home time feel like extra work time.
To keep your home tidy, try to schedule your chores and stick to your schedule. By sticking to a plan, you will have an easier time keeping your home tidy. Also, you’ll be able to relax when a mess does present itself because you already know when it’ll be tidied up.
5. Turn Your Phone Off
We don’t always think about it, but many of us are guilty of wasting a significant amount of time looking at our smartphones. To find more time for hobbies and socializing, try putting your phone away. As an added benefit, you’ll have less eye fatigue and also be less likely to check work emails while at home.
If you can’t or don’t want to turn your phone completely off while you’re at home, try putting it on silent. This way you won’t be bothered by alerts every time you get an email, but you’ll still be able to check for any missed calls or essential texts quickly.
6. Cultivate A General Sense of Wellbeing
The next few tips are all pretty interconnected under the general umbrella of wellbeing. These include things like eating well, exercising, and getting enough sleep. You may not see why these are essential aspects of work-life balance, but we’ll explain in more detail below.
7. Exercise Regularly
Regular exercise requires you to dedicate time to taking care of yourself. This practice inherently forces you to let the scales of work-life balance more equally. Also, by taking time to exercise you will see a boost in your mood and energy that will help you feel like you have more time to dedicate to non-work-related activities.
8. Eat Healthy Foods
Eating healthy foods will provide numerous benefits to your life, and allow you to balance the stress of work with the simple pleasures of life. Healthy foods are delicious, and they fuel your body correctly so that you can feel more energetic and have a greater sense of mental clarity. Both of which will help you to wrap up work days more efficiently and leave you ready to relax.
9. Get Enough Sleep
Just as exercising and eating right will help you enjoy a better balance between work life and home life, so will getting enough sleep. This concept may sound counterintuitive at first because more rest means less time awake. However, by getting enough sleep, the quality of the time you spend awake will be much improved.
To ensure you are getting enough sleep, make sure you’re getting to bed at a reasonable time. Also, make sure that it is relatively cold in your bedroom and as dark as possible. Also, leave electronics out of your room to help cultivate a sleep-promoting environment.
10. Focus on Your Breath
There’s no denying that work and life do not always seem to mix well together. In fact, work is a primary stressor for many. However rest assured that when you feel overwhelmed, you can use simple breathing techniques to help bring balance back to your day. Deep breathing and guided meditation are two ways to focus on your breath and feel more stable.
11. Delegate Tasks You Don’t Enjoy
If managing your work schedule and your home schedule together seems like a job in and of itself, it may be time to reach out for help. Ask your family members to contribute to household chores or hire help if you need it. Don’t feel like you are responsible for everything. It’s okay to let go of the tasks you don’t enjoy and pass them on to someone else.
This tip can also work well for reducing your workload. Look for any tasks that you’re currently doing that are outside of your job description. For example, if you’re the only one that tidies up the break room, maybe suggest a system to make sure that everyone contributes. Likewise, if you have an assistant, try delegating tasks you don’t enjoy them.
12. Foster Your Friendships
People with a good balance between work and life make time for the people they love. It is as simple as that. Stable friendships provide some amazing benefits including:
- A Heightened Sense of Belonging
- Boosts in Happiness and Self-Confidence
- Decrease in Stress
- Reduced Risk of Serious Health Issues
Also, when you take time to reach out to loved ones, you’ll feel great getting away from the stress of everyday life and spending time with someone whose company you enjoy. Try making a regular habit of meeting with one or two friends or family members and see how much joy it brings to your life.
13. Find a Flexible Schedule
Employers are continually searching for creative ways to retain good employees. If you feel like you are spending too much time in the office, try approaching your boss about a more flexible work week. Try to brainstorm how you could efficiently work from somewhere other than your office or cubicle.
If your job is not flexible concerning where you perform your duties, think of other ways to bring a sense of flexibility to your work week. Maybe ask for nontraditional hours or an extra day off during the week. If all else fails and your employer won’t budge, consider looking for an employer who already offers flexible schedules.
14. Prioritize Relaxation
Last but not least, treat relaxation as a priority. Giving your body the time and support it needs to relax is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your work life balance.
If you find that you have a difficult time settling down and relaxing after work, try researching different relaxation techniques. Also, consider stepping outside your home to get help relaxing. Treat yourself to a nice meal, a massage, or even just a trip to the salon. Whatever it is, put work out of your mind and let your brain have some well-earned downtime.
Work-life balance: Final Thoughts
They say work life balance is a myth but it doesn’t hurt if we try following the above tips. It will definitely help us perform better at team meetings. It will also help people whose still deciding which career to take, whether in medical, service, or even death care industry.
Leave a Reply