Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance Improving Productivity

Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance. tips to improve your work-life balance — Tips for a better work-life balance. Work Life Balance Tips to Decrease and Manage Stress at Work. Begin with a morning routine that does not center around work. Find a job that you love. Leave work at work. Work smarter, not harder.

Balancing your professional and personal life can be challenging, but it’s essential. Here’s how to improve your work-life balance today. Best Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance to improve your productivity.

Tips For Maintaining A Healthy Work-Life Balance

Maintaining a work/life balance is easy when you’re a sole trader, right? You typically work from home and you have no one else to answer to, so it should be easy to switch off. Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. In fact, many home-based sole traders struggle to strike a healthy work/life balance because the lines are more blurred.

Ella Legg, founder of copywriting consultancy Ella Smith Communications, knows how difficult it can be to strike that balance, having experienced it firsthand.

What Is Work-Life Balance, And Why Is It Important?

In short, work-life balance is the state of equilibrium where a person equally prioritizes the demands of one’s career and the demands of one’s personal life. Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Some of the common reasons that lead to a Poor Work-Life Balance include:

Having children
Working longer hours
Increased responsibilities at work
Increased responsibilities at home

A good work-life balance, said Chris Chancey, career expert and CEO of Amplio Recruiting, has numerous positive effects, including less stress, a lower risk of burnout and a greater sense of well-being. This not only benefits employees but employers, too.

“Employers who are committed to providing environments that support work-life balance for their employees can save on costs, experience fewer cases of absenteeism, and enjoy a more loyal and productive workforce,” said Chancey.

Best 32 Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

1. Ask For Flexibility: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Having open, honest conversations about your needs and those of your employer and team can lead to productive solutions.

Those can include flextime, a compressed workweek schedule, job sharing, and other creative options.

2. Let Go Of Perfectionism

A lot of overachievers develop perfectionist tendencies at a young age when demands on their time are limited to school, hobbies and maybe an after-school job.

It’s easier to maintain that perfectionist habit as a kid, but as you grow up, life gets more complicated. As you climb the ladder at work and as your family grows, your responsibilities mushroom.

Perfectionism becomes out of reach, and if that habit is left unchecked, it can become destructive, says executive coach Marilyn Puder-York, PhD, who wrote The Office Survival Guide.

3. Play to Your Strengths: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Don’t try and be all things to all people. Focus on your strengths and outsource the others. If you’re not a whiz at accounts or graphic design, outsource them instead of wasting time.

4. Prioritize Your Health

Recognizing the importance of maintaining your physical health, emotional well-being, and mental fitness is the first step to making it a priority in your life.

Use the concept of habit stacking to build simple, supportive actions into your day. Consider habits like:

Daily meditation
Movement/exercise
Social connection
A gratitude practice
Committing to using your paid time off

Your overall physical, emotional and mental health should be your main concern.

If you struggle with anxiety or depression and think therapy would benefit you, fit those sessions into your schedule, even if you have to leave work early or ditch your evening spin class.

5. Prioritize Your Time

You may have a to-do list with 50 tasks on it, so you need to prioritize those tasks into four categories.

They are:

Urgent and important
Important but not urgent
Urgent but not important
Neither urgent nor important.

6. Know Your Peaks And Troughs: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Are you a morning person?

If you are, assign tough, high-concentration tasks to the mornings. Don’t leave the tough tasks until its night time and vice versa.

7. Accept That There Is No ‘Perfect’ Work-Life Balance

When you hear “work-life balance,” you probably imagine having an extremely productive day at work, and leaving early to spend the other half of the day with friends and family. While this may seem ideal, it is not always possible.

Don’t strive for the perfect schedule; strive for a realistic one. Some days, you might focus more on work, while other days you might have more time and energy to pursue your hobbies or spend time with your loved ones. Balance is achieved over time, not each day.

8. Practice Self-Compassion

One of the most important ways to achieve a sense of work-life balance is to let go of perfectionism.

The approach of perfectionism may have brought some success during school and early career. But the stress it causes accumulates over time.

The strain on our system and emotional resources increases as our responsibilities increase.

It’s important to recognize that life isn’t always easy. Everyone struggles, and you aren’t always going to get it “right.”

Recognizing this truth allows you to create a shift toward a more compassionate growth-and-learning approach to work and life. This can help to support a sense of balance.

It can also provide an inspiring model for others who also need to hear this message.

9. Plot Some Personal Time: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

When personal issues arise, it can be tempting to bury yourself in your work. Don’t do it If you don’t make time for your personal life – your “me” time, including your family and your health – you won’t have a business to go back to.

10: Find a Job That You Love

Although work is an expected societal norm, your career shouldn’t be restraining. If you hate what you do, you aren’t going to be happy, plain and simple. Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

You don’t need to love every aspect of your job, but it needs to be exciting enough that you don’t dread getting out of bed every morning.

Monahan recommended finding a job that you are so passionate about you would do it for free. “If your job is draining you, and you are finding it difficult to do the things you love outside of work, something is wrong,” said Monahan.

“You may be working in a toxic environment, for a toxic person, or doing a job that you truly don’t love. If this is the case, it is time to find a new job.”

11. Unplug: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

From telecommuting to programs that make work easier, technology has helped our lives in many ways. But it has also created expectations of constant accessibility.

The work day never seems to end. “There are times when you should just shut your phone off and enjoy the moment,” says Robert Brooks, a professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and co-author of The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence and Personal Strength in Your Life.

Brooks says that phone notifications interrupt your off time and inject an undercurrent of stress in your system.

So don’t text at your kid’s soccer game and don’t send work emails while you’re hanging out with family, Brooks advises.

Make quality time true quality time. By not reacting to the updates from work, you will developing a stronger habit of resilience.

“Resilient people feel a greater sense of control over their lives,” says Brooks, while reactive people have less control and are more prone to stress.

12. Take a Vacation: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Sometimes, truly unplugging means taking vacation time and shutting work completely off for a while.

Whether your vacation consists of a one-day staycation or a two-week trip to Bali, it’s important to take time off to physically and mentally recharge.

According to the State of American Vacation 2018 study conducted by the U.S. Travel Association, 52% of employees reported having unused vacation days left over at the end of the year.

Employees are often worried that taking time off will disrupt the workflow, and they will be met with a backlog of work when they return. This fear should not restrict you from taking a much-needed break.

“The truth is, there is no nobility in not taking well-deserved time away from work; the benefits of taking a day off far outweigh the downsides,” said Chancey.

“With proper planning, you can take time away without worrying about burdening your colleagues or contending with a huge workload when you return.”

13. Have Set Work Hours – and Stick To Them

Set work hours for yourself and do everything in your power to stick to them. Otherwise, before you know it, you’ll be working until midnight every night.

14. Find Time For Your Finances: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Whether you work for yourself or not, it’s important to feel confident about your finances. In order to do this, you need to get some accounting software in place and use it from day one.

Cash flow is one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses. You should start using accounting tools early on so you know what’s going on, financially, from day dot.

15. Make Time For Yourself and Your Loved Ones

While your job is important, it shouldn’t be your entire life. You were an individual before taking this position, and you should prioritize the activities or hobbies that make you happy.

Chancey said that achieving work-life balance requires deliberate action.

“If you do not firmly plan for personal time, you will never have time to do other things outside of work,” said Chancey. “No matter how hectic your schedule might be, you ultimately have control of your time and life.”

16. Set Boundaries and Work Hours: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Set boundaries for yourself and your colleagues, to avoid burnout. When you leave the office, avoid thinking about upcoming projects or answering company emails.

Consider having a separate computer or phone for work, so you can shut it off when you clock out. If that isn’t possible, use separate browsers, emails or filters for your work and personal platforms.

Additionally, Chancey recommended setting specific work hours.

“Whether you work away from home or at home, it is important to determine when you will work and when you will stop working; otherwise, you might find yourself answering work-related emails late at night, during vacations or on weekends off,” said Chancey.

Chancey advised notifying team members and your manager about boundaries beyond which you cannot be accessible, because you are engaged in personal activities.

This will help to ensure that they understand and respect your workplace limits and expectations.

16. Manage Your Time, Long Term

Create a timeline of your activities. Specific computer programs can help with this, or you can customize your own Excel spreadsheet or Word table.

Put dates across the top and activities down the side. Break each task into components.

Include family commitments – such as holidays, birthday parties, etc. – so you don’t forget that you are unavailable for work on those days.

17. Make Your Workspace Work For You

Working for yourself does tend to require long hours and not much downtime, so invest in equipment that will support you.

That includes getting a comfortable chair, an ergonomic keyboard, a support stand for your laptop, etc.

An ergonomic assessment of your workspace is worth every cent.

18. Tap Into Technology: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Instead of driving to a meeting, use Skype or conferencing technologies like GoToMeeting. But remember to switch them off.

19. Make Exercise a Must-Do, Not a Should-Do

It’s easy to cancel the gym, the evening run or the yoga class because a client wants something done yesterday.

Instead, ensure exercise is given as much priority as your clients and making money. A healthy body means a fresh mind, which means you will function better and complete tasks in less time.

20. Take Time To Make Time

Invest in time-tracking tools. There are plenty of tools you can use to track everything from the frequency and duration of meetings, to chasing and converting leads.

Time-tracking software allows you to quickly build an understanding of how long a particular task takes.

That way, you can effectively estimate how long your next work task will take.

21. Know and Nurture Your Network

Prioritize growing your network and have a structured lead/conversion system in place so you can track the time/cost involved to grow your network.

Set the benchmarks early on and learn the lessons early.

22. Do What You Love

Make time for something you love – other than work – and give it the time it deserves. It will energize and refresh you, and enable you to nurture the creative thought that is essential to every business owner.

23. Be Realistic: Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

At the end of each working day, perform a little self-analysis. Ask yourself what worked today, what didn’t, what went wrong and how the issue can be fixed.

Remember there are thousands of businesses just like yours learning the same lessons every day. Don’t forget to tap into the valuable resources around you – your peers – for help.

24. Start Small. Build From There.

We’ve all been there: crash diets that fizzle out, New Year’s resolutions we forget by February. It’s the same with work-life balance when we take on too much too quickly, says Brooks.

Many of his workaholic clients commit to drastic changes: cutting their hours from 80 hours a week to 40, bumping up their daily run from zero miles a day to five miles a day. It’s a recipe for failure, says Brooks.

When one client, who was always absent from his family dinners, vowed to begin attending the meals nightly, Brooks urged him to start smaller.

So he began with one evening a week. Eventually, he worked his way up to two to three dinners per week.

“If you’re trying to change a certain script in your life, start small and experience some success. Build from there,” says Brooks.

25. Step Out: Learn Tips For A Better Work-Life Balance

Working for yourself can get lonely, so schedule some phone calls or coffee time with like-minded business owners to discuss ideas and offer each other support.