Three Ways to Improve your Work-Life Balance

It’s one of the trickiest issues yet one of the most relevant to every day modern life. It seems we work too much and often don’t play enough. With the advent of the web, mobiles and the endless bombardment of information we proliferate and endure, our day to day existence has more going on than ever before. It’s not news. We spend as much time administering our work as we do actually doing it, constantly having to market ourselves and keep ahead of accelerating developments. To top it all off we’ve still got all those other things to do, like eating, sleeping, getting the kids to bed and earning a living wage. It can feel like it’s all coming apart at the seams and you’re pulled from pillar to post. So in the midst of all this, how do we improve our work-life balance? Well the first thing to realise is we’re the blind leading the blind. Anyone who advises on how to achieve a work life balance is always working it out for themselves just as much as anyone else. It’s a never-ending process, a dynamic exchange, for life is always changing. We’re all making it up as we go along. Yet, even though nothing can be set in stone, there are ways you can approach things. The first biggest way to improve work life balance is to take a step back. Consider what you’re doing and what you’re doing it all for. There is always a work-life balance, but how does it all weigh up? Are you working too much? Are you spending enough time with your family? What work-life balance goal are you aiming for? Chances are you’ve already had that conversation with yourself. You then need to cover the basics: are you getting enough sleep, exercise and the right food in the right quantities? We need these things to live effectively, so they’re important. I’d wager that most people can’t say yes to this. However as soon as you start making changes, like going to bed earlier or cooking more fresh food, you suddenly find that something’s got to give. That extra 10 minutes chopping veg sets you behind two emails and before you know it, the work is slowly piling up. A good start then finds itself in trouble hours, days or weeks down the line. Most of us are guilty of working too much. However in tough economic times, we’re competing fiercely for resources. We’re cutting prices, working longer hours for less and so we realise the national deficit cuts deeper than our pockets. It cuts into our very lives. The answer therefore is to work smart not hard. Necessity is the mother of invention, so needs must. This is work-life balance trick number two. The way forward on this one is efficiency. It’s a full time job just trying to deal with social networking. Do you need to comment so much? Can you say in one email what you’ve been saying in three? Are there routines you can put in place that require minimum thought? Can you take advantage of the convenience of online shopping or download an app that makes things easier? Sometimes even just stopping everything and having a good tidy up can go a long way to improving work-life balance. By indulging a few hours in your own organisation now, you can find days are saved down the line. You won’t have to go rooting through boxes to find that elusive letter you’re sure you saw somewhere in the vicinity three months ago. It might be boring but it’s necessary. If you’re hunting through piles of stuff, you might as well tidy it as you go. Answer number three is a simple one: delegate to the team. At times of austerity pressure is put upon us to make do and mend, to ‘do it yourself’. However surely this makes further adjustment to the economy, whereby tradesmen find themselves out of work at the hands of money-saving and time-starved folk? Consider a simple cost benefit analysis. Do you have the skills and experience to genuinely save you time and money or are you just losing hours that would be better spent reading to the kids or relaxing in the bath? Some prices are worth paying; you don’t have to do everything. Sometimes it’s worth getting some help in. Just as you’d help others, it’s likely there are a team of willing and skilled helpers surrounding you. Friends, family and colleagues might chip in and help for a slice of the cake you were baking with your child anyway. Not only that, working as a team contributes to bringing people that little bit closer. It’s all easier said than done but getting back to basics is the way forward when it comes to maintaining your work-life balance. It’s like tending a garden – the work is never done.