The majority of adults hope that work, study, family life, and hobbies are in appropriate proportions. However, the desired balance remains a dream when more time and resources are spent on work than it really should be. The mismatch is often due to work creeping home.
Most people realize how difficult it can be to adjust their work and home lives during a pandemic when married and have children. Somehow it seems that work life or home life is constantly encroaching on the other and causing problems at home, at work, and many times both. However, the following tips are great options to help with balancing work and home.
Plan and anticipate
The best thing to do when trying to balance home and work is to make a schedule. Schedule your home and work time. Know how much time you have.
Then, you will know when you need to schedule home and work events. This will make your life significantly more manageable, and you will know which activities fit into which time slot. Just make sure you stick to your schedule.
Most knowledge workers spend their day reacting to messages with constant distraction, making it impossible to think clearly. You never get your real work done, and you make frustrating attempts to relax or recharge.
One system to try is time blocking. Each day you time block your calendar. There is a specific time for deep work, and there are times for meetings and emails. Deep work time might the time you have first in the morning. If you get knocked off from your plan, you update it the next time you get a chance. You also have a system to quickly capture tasks and notes to process later so that you don’t have to disrupt your current time block. You can use software tools for this (Notion, for example) or a simple paper planner.
Build gaps in your day
One of the easiest ways to feel that your work-life balance is correct (or at least good enough) is to build downtime or gaps in your day. This will allow you to get in mentally and maybe slow down a bit as well.
You can also do this during the working day. Do not reschedule project meetings. Build a small gap between each meeting. Participants also appreciate it: it gives them time to grab a drink, take a comfortable break, or check their message before the next session begins.
While you can’t exactly jump into the gym every few minutes between each meeting, it will help you gather your thoughts. This will help you feel like you are at work and, in turn, make it easier to leave at the end of the day, shut down, and do something fun.
Share Duties
Many times home and work commitments can become overwhelming. Typically one spouse is handling more of the obligations than the other. So, learn to share burdens at home, and each spouse can be responsible for their work. Also, older children should have some home duties as well to help parents balance work and home.
Leave Work at Work
Balancing home and work can be difficult because it is so easy to take work home. If you want to balance home and work, then you will always leave work at work. Keep home a sacred place for family and home activities.
Devote Weekends to Home Activities
A great way to keep home and work separate is to always focus on home projects during weekends, or at least on days off from work if you happen to work on weekends. When specific days are home days and other days are workdays, balancing work and home is considerably simple.
Plan
The best way to balance work and home is always to make a plan. Tons of tips will help you, but there is nothing like making a plan and then follow the procedure to balance work and home. It might not be easy, but if you have it planned out and follow the program, you will be surprised how easy you can find a balance.
