- Reassessing work/life balance
Reassessing your work/life balance
Work pressure can sometimes take over our lives, and although we all know there’s more to life than work, some of us can get so caught up in long working hours and increased workplace competition, that we may forget it.
Friends, family and hobbies can often be unintentionally neglected while work fills most of the hours in our day. With the growth in technology, it has become easier to work even if you are not at the office; emails and the Internet make it harder to switch off from work, and communicating out of working hours is now common.
Most people who spend a lot of time at work find they earn a reasonable income but have no time to enjoy their money or spend any time doing the things they enjoy.
Finding a work/life balance means dividing your time between everything you find important in your life. If you (or your family) are suffering from a lack of balance in your work life, perhaps it’s time for some changes.
Reasons people may decide to reassess their work/life balance include:- exhausted on a daily basis
- not spending enough time with friends or family
- work has become their life
- spending evening and weekends thinking about/doing work
- not spending any time enjoying hobbies/activities
- dreading getting up in the mornings
- feeling unable to cope with the pressure of life
- not enjoying life anymore
Life should be about balancing the things you enjoy with the responsibilities of earning a living. Without this balance, relationships may begin to break down and life may stop being pleasurable anymore. If you’re working to earn money that you don’t have the time to spend or missing out on spending time with your family, a life coach may be able to help. - How can life coaching help me?
How can life coaching help me achieve a better work/life balance?
A life coach can be a great way to help you get back on track and help you decide how you’d ideally like to spend your life. Although we all have to make some compromises, it is often possible to organise our lives in a much more productive way and start enjoying the things we want to.
A life coach will refer to the ‘Wheel of Life’ to support you with this.
Life is short and making every day count should be top priority. A life coach may be able to help you see things in a different way and set clear goals on what you’d like to achieve.
- Improving your work/life balance
Improving your work/life balance
For the majority of the population, work is an inevitable part of life. Not only do most people need to work to achieve the lifestyle they aspire to or are comfortable with, but they often need to work for a large part of their lives.
There are many positive benefits to working covering social, mental, physical, emotional and financial areas. However, in the same way that when we are in a good job which we enjoy, we benefit in all these areas.
When we are in a job that we don’t enjoy, and we don’t find a life balance with, we experience detrimental effects in all of these areas.
It is because work is such a large area of most peoples lives that we need to ensure that we enjoy it and find a suitable balance between life and work.Here are a few things that may help you to manage your time effectively and find that work and life balance.
Improving the balance- Time Management[+]Time is something that we can’t make more of, we have a certain amount and that is it. So really it is your most valuable asset and the thing that should be at the forefront of your mind when it comes to achieving a good work and life balance.
With around 8 hours needed for sleep each night you’re left with 112 hours per week to divide between work and the rest of your life.
If you are having trouble making time for the things you love, then looking at your week as a block of time, where you allocate slots of time for certain things is a great way to start to effectively manage time. If you work an average work week of 8 hours per day, 5 days a week then you are left with 72 hours of time to manage. Where your 72 hours goes is up to you and will be different for everyone. There will be some spent on daily chores like cooking, washing, cleaning etc...Work out how much time you want to allocate to these things and then prioritise the other things you want to fit into your life.
Many of us waste time by doing things we don’t really want to do, other people demand our time and we often feel obliged to give it to them. If time were money, we might be less reluctant to do so. Try to view your time as your most valuable asset before you make decisions about where you are going to spend it. This should help you prioritise and manage time more effectively, allowing you to be essentially making time for yourself. - Identify your priorities[+]
Once you have worked out how much disposable time you have, you can start to think about what things you would like to fill that time with. If you only have around 4 hours per day of time for yourself, it will be easier for you to say no to that nagging friend who you don’t really want to see and spend time with your children instead, or help you turn down that unpaid overtime at work.
When it comes to deciding which things you want to put at the top of your priority list, try to think about what you would want to say you had done well when you looked back at your life in 50 years time. Chances are that you won’t look back and say that you were glad you watched so much "telly' or spent so long earning extra money to spend on luxuries. The things you find important in life will become apparent to you when you change the way you think about your life.
Life is very precious and short, so being aware of how to manage time is the key to making time for the thing your really love, appreciate and value. These things will be different for everyone, but they will all have the same result of a better work and life balance and a happier you!
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