Work life balance tips
It's New Year's resolutions season again. Most people make the promise to lose weight, or hit the gym more. (Yawn!) While these stereotypes are good things to aim for, why not start your year off with something that will have an even bigger impact on your life: Work-life balance?
We often hear tales about that mythical ideal known as "work-life balance", but when you are simultaneously trying to read "Green eggs and Ham" to your daughter for the umpteenth time, while getting that proposal to your boss before 10pm, work-life balance seems as impossible as "Green eggs and Ham".
We've done a little research and compiled this cheat sheet to help you start your new year off right, and stay sane all year long.
Disconnect
Technology has helped make our work lives easier in many ways. But it has also created an expectation of constant accessibility. The work day never seems to end. There needs to be a time when you just shut off your phone and enjoy the moment. So, while at your kid's ballet recital or at a braai with friends don't text or send work e-mails. Make quality time true quality time.
No is not always negative
If you make yourself constantly available to your boss, you could end up feeling overloaded. If you’re the person who says "yes" without thinking about it, next time take a moment to pause and look at your current workload. Assess your capacity to take on a new task before saying yes. Sometimes a no is not even necessary, you could negotiate deadlines instead.
Work smarter, not harder
Get yourself organised. Give each task on your schedule an allocated time, and try not to get caught up in unproductive activities, such as unstructured meetings that tend to take up a lot of your time. By creating a schedule or to do list, you will be able to prevent overbooking yourself and carve out time for family and of course time to relax and recharge.
Leave work at work
The Mental Health Foundation says that if you do happen to take work home with you, you should try to confine it to a certain area of your home - and be able to close the door on it. When you're leaving work focus on shutting down for the day, closing your diary and saving your work. When you walk out the office take a moment to breathe deeply and acknowledge that your work day has ended.
Write your own rule book
Lastly, it is important to ignore the "shoulds"- the shoulds that come from other people and internalising others' mindsets. Rely on your own intuition. Majority of Millennials are likely to blur the lines between work and home and set their own work patterns. For some this could mean virtual meetings (skype) rather than real ones, or working from home .
Well, we can all dream, can't we? What's workable is, of course, another matter.