We often hear how organizations and companies in the private sector promote themselves using the work-life balance formula, i.e. the balance between personal life and professional life. From a life design point of view, I don’t believe in delimiting the two areas, because it would be like having two separate lives. I believe that life is a whole in which both the profession and health, relationships, or passions enter. When one of these ingredients is missing or impaired, an imbalance inevitably occurs.
And yet what is work-life balance? Can we have a perfect work-life balance?
To write this article I was inspired by working with a client who had an intense few months at work, during which her main priority became work. Inevitably, one area of her life suffered, namely the area of passions or hobbies. She sacrificed the exact time she used to devote to herself, namely those weekly activities that relaxed her. slowly, without realizing it, burnout and inevitably health problems appeared.
But how many times hasn’t the same thing happened to us?
How many times have you felt that work is taking over your life? That the only desire after a day’s work is to throw yourself into bed and sleep? And the next day, surprise, start all over again.
Or maybe, on the contrary, you had so many health-related problems that the ability to concentrate on professional activity decreased significantly? As well as focusing on relationships or passions?
All these aspects are interconnected and for this reason, we cannot necessarily talk only about balance between personal life and professional life. But there is a lot of talk about this balance because work takes up a total of about 1/3 of our existence and it is an aspect that can have a very big impact on each of us.
There is no such thing as a perfect 50/50 balance, but we can talk about how we bring work life into harmony with everything that our existence stands for. When we say to keep a balance, we mean to strive to find resources to manage stress and exhaustion, and to have enough energy to pay attention to the other areas of our life. For each of us, harmony means something different and can change according to each stage of life. In your 20s, relationships, and profession are most likely to have the highest priority, then in your 30s plus when children appear, perhaps profession, relationships and passions will be affected, and from 40 onwards probably a higher priority we will give to health. Depending on the stage you are in, harmony means something else, and a personalized plan helps you pay attention to each important area of your life.
We talk a lot about professional life because that’s where we get the financial resources that allow us to fuel the other areas of existence, that’s where we get recognition, fulfillment, a meaning. Companies and organizations rely on these aspects when they promote the concept of balance between professional and personal life.
Bringing work life into harmony with all that is your existence means not ignoring your personal life, including relationships, health, and hobbies in favor of work, and at the same time it means not accumulating too much stress from not being able to complete work tasks because you put in less effort or put off the things you have to do.
What I have noticed is that there are sometimes days when we feel inspired and other days we have days when we feel drained. But even in such situations, we can have solutions to avoid suffering from a professional point of view.
- From a work point of view, frustration, and overload are signs that you are out of balance. And clear signs that your work is in harmony with your existence are:
- Don’t feel like work demands and personal obligations are in constant conflict.
- You can complete work tasks without additional work.
- You rest enough, you have a healthy program in terms of diet, and sports.
- You don’t dread Monday.
- You have enough time to relax and enjoy your hobbies.
- You feel you spend enough time with family and friends.
- You don’t think about what you have to do at work outside of working hours.
- You take your vacation days.
- You enjoy the benefits you receive from the employing company: flexible hours and gym memberships.
And overall, you will experience a sense of peace and inner fulfillment day after day, week after week, month after month.
If instead, you feel that your work is not in harmony with your existence, take into account the following 5 steps of life design, through which you can build this balance.
1- Discover what motivates you professionally. If you don’t like what you do, if it doesn’t fulfill you and doesn’t give you meaning, if the above signs are not found in your life, it is unlikely that you will experience that feeling of inner peace and fulfillment. So maybe it’s a sign that a job change is right for you.
2- Make a plan. In life design, an important point is to accept where you are. Therefore, empathize with yourself and what you feel so that you become aware of where you are. What are the issues you face that throw you off balance? Do you spend a lot of extra hours at the office? Do you feel like you have no control over your schedule? Are you taking on too many work responsibilities and can’t say no? When you create a personalized plan for how to address these issues, you will be able to experience and discover exactly those things that will help you bring harmony into your life.
3- Create a ritual to delimit work hours and non-work hours. This step is primarily for those of you who work from home. Since working from home, we are effectively jumping from bed to chair and sometimes from chair to bed. We no longer manage to make a healthy transition between the hours spent working and the hours of relaxation. Many times, we find ourselves working more than normal and staying up late to answer those emails that we didn’t answer earlier.
a) Create a schedule, especially if you have a flexible schedule. Check your calendar at the beginning of each week. Set your schedule in the office calendar according to the hours you will be available. If you know that on Tuesday you start your schedule at 10 a.m., set that you will be out of the office by 10 a.m. and stick to it. If on Wednesday you finish the program at 17.00, then set that after 17.00 you are out of the office and stick to this. You will make your schedule visible and transparent to everyone and in this way, you will draw healthy boundaries.
b) Get ready for work. Try to take that time to get ready as if you were going to the office, even if you work from home. Don’t jump out of bed straight into the chair, even if it’s more comfortable to work in your pajamas. Rather, create a wardrobe to use during work hours, even if you work from home. Mentally, through this habit, you will create those anchors that will delimit the hours spent working from those spent outside work.
c) Plan activities every day for the time outside of working hours. Thus, you will not be tempted to stay connected to the office. Especially now during the children’s holidays, for those of you who have children, it’s very easy to be tempted to work more, because you suddenly have more time that you don’t know how to fill.
4- Take breaks. Small breaks during work hours or even a day off during the week now and then are essential in keeping this harmony in your life. About me, a habit I have that gives me a lot of energy is to sometimes take Monday off, not (only) for administrative work, but to enjoy the things I like, in peace: a walk in nature, a coffee drunk in a beautiful place, a few hours spent reading.
5- Listen to your body. Watch for signs that you’re burning out. You will get signs of exhaustion from your body. Headaches, stomachaches, sleep problems, lack of interest, fatigue, or concentration problems should raise questions. Then you most likely need conscious breaks and disconnection.
Work-life balance therefore does not mean a perfect 50/50 balance between professional life and personal life. It means finding your harmony in work, family, friends, hobbies, health, and self-care, taking into account every stage of your life.
With love, Raluca ❤️
