6 Areas to Focus on for Work-Life Balance

baLANCE IN LIFE


People nowadays keep running after professional success, missing out on rare opportunities to live precious moments with their family and friends.

And we all know that time and tide wait for none. You only live once.

So are you still willing to trade away your balance in life for a prestigious position in your company or a higher pay package?

Here are the fundamental components that form the mantras for life and can help you improve your daily routine to strike the perfect work-life balance.

Let’s take a look at the six components that, when managed well, can make a world of a difference.

1. Self-Management

Self-management is the realization and recognition that you should effectively use the resources in your life — optimizing what’s available to you to enhance the quality of life. Sometimes this can be challenging to achieve as it takes a lot of effort, dedication and willpower.

Managing yourself includes getting proper sleep, consuming healthy food for wholesome nutrition and exercising for fitness. When you work toward self-improvement, you become the captain of your own ship and can steer your way to success. You will become more confident professionally and will know that there is more to your life than just office work.

2. Time Management

We all get only 24 hours in a day. How we spend our time decides what is left of it and for what activity or task. You need to work and also give quality time to people who matter to you.

Effective use of time thus entails making optimal use of our day, especially at work. It requires you to strike a good balance between the time available and the resources summoned by matching them with the given challenges.

Time should be managed by setting appropriate goals and prioritizing what’s important and what’s urgent, against what is both important and urgent. Effective time management involves addressing your priorities while knowing what you do best and when.

Using tools and delegating to simplify tasks will often help accomplish your goals and manage time. Your aim should be to wrap up all your work in the office so that you don’t bring it home.

3. Stress Management

Over time, our societies have become highly complex and pretentious. There is constant pressure to prove yourself at work, and you are only as good as your last achievement. Such increasing involvedness can put anyone under stress.

More distractions and more noise require us to pay attention in every direction. Demanding situations require multi-tasking, which also tends to increase our stress levels.

You can become more proficient at maintaining tranquility and finding yourself at ease in situations involving high pressure by simply keeping calm. You just need to focus on one task at a time, rather than trying to finish everything at once. This also helps ensure quality.

A lot of stress-related problems often stem from the fact that some employees can’t say no to extra work. In such cases they over-burden themselves with work and then crack under pressure. They come home tired and unhappy.

So build downtime in your schedule and learn to say no when its justified. Leave work on time and be home with your loved ones. This is a basic step to find a way out of a pressure-filled situation.

4. Change Management

In this fast-paced world, the one thing that remains constant is change. You must continually adopt new means and methods to build a successful career. Those who don’t adapt to the changes taking place around them may be forced to lead an unsatisfied life.

Effective change management entails making concerted and periodic efforts to ensure that the rate and volume of change in the office does not overwhelm you.

Accepting changes helps us move on and come to terms with life. The changes affecting you could be any kind of alterations at home or work, internal or external. However, one of the biggest changes that one must come to terms with is the evolution of technology.

Once you accept that technology has the power to enhance work-life balance, you will soon find out how you can use it to your advantage. For instance, if you’re a working mother or father, you could always use your laptop to work from home.

5. Technology Management

Though technology is considered a boon, some professionals tend to over-use and turn it into a bane for themselves, throwing work-life balance out of the window. Just like its definition, the tools of technology have also been evolving over the decades. Today, the rate of advancement has accelerated exponentially, and technology is now an integral part of our lives.

But the effective management of technology should ideally involve the technology serving you, instead of abusing you. What we do is just the opposite as we often let our smartphones and computers run our lives for us, creating stress and taking up a major chunk of our time.

In order to make your life easy and tension-free, take charge of your life and take away the importance you give to gadgets and gizmos. Switch off from work after office hours, stop answering office mail on weekends, stop the instant messaging and look beyond your phone screen.

Only then will you be able to acknowledge how beautiful life is, even without the digital devices.

6. Leisure Management

Leisure is a vital part of the overall human experience but sadly it is also the most overlooked of all the work-life balance supporting essentials. Leisure management involves recognizing the significance of relaxation and rest.

You can never short-change leisure or compensate your time off with anything in the world. Even if you try, it’ll never be worth the bargain. So every now and then, it is important for you to take a break from work.

Take a vacation after completing a major project and drop the activities that have been sapping your energy and time. And don’t assume that it takes a lot to unwind. You can start small by taking short coffee breaks between errands to recharge yourself. Listening to music, taking a walk, etc. can also help you rejuvenate. Don’t sit at home during weekends: go out for dinner, go for a hike or watch a movie with a friend.

The key is to let your hair down after a hard day’s work; life will seem a lot happier and more satisfying.  Interestingly, even though a certain activity may be enjoyable, an excess of it may lead to monotony. So, effective leisure management also requires you to try new things.

All the above components are crucial factors affecting your balance in life and are often connected to one another. Begin sorting your life by following the tips provided and you will soon be a happier professional.

(Photo by Maxine Sherrin / CC BY)


Devika Arora is a professional writer and blogger with special focus on career building and job search. She is currently working with Naukrigulf.com, a job search portal addressing employment needs in the Middle East.

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