The lockdown has drawn a serious impact on everyone’s lives around the globe. It has affected people’s physical, mental, emotional, and economical conditions. If you give an eye on some of the researches performed recently, the reports say the pandemic has altered the daily lives of people, the way they work, their access to social protection, schooling, business, and literally everything.
While everyone is compelled to stay inside their houses, many people have lost their job. On the other hand, there are people whose workload has been increased by many folds. It has taken away their work life balance and has made them really sick of working odd and extra hours.
The people who are working from home during this pandemic for a long time can relate their condition to this. The pain is real and hence we have thought of giving some tips on how to maintain your work life balance to make your life somewhat easier.
What is your idea of Work Life Balance?
Before going to the part where we will discuss some of the tips that can help you balance your life, let me brief you on the idea of work life balance, its causes, and the impact it does.
So what is your idea of work life balance? More likely your answer would match mine as the concept is very clear. Isn’t it? In layman’s terms, a work life balance refers to a condition where people prioritize both work and personal lives equally.
You can also take it as it’s about having the flexibility to get things done in your professional and personal life without any stress. But here arises the question, why the need for work life balance is becoming so important?
Why work life balance is important?
To answer the previous question on the need for work life balance, we would see it as to why it is important. We often see that people give their work, precedence over anything other in their lives. Reason can be many, being the desire of succeeding professionally, not to lag behind, the temptation of learning, working and earning more, etc.
But in all these efforts, they forget that establishing harmony in their work life balance is equally important to live a happy and complete life. This balance lets you have time for everything that matters to you be it your family, your hobbies, your dreams, and your career everything.
It lets you take a break from your monotonous life schedule and refresh your mind to regain your energy. You feel relaxed and happy with everything you do and hence you are saved from many serious health problems. Okay, that is fine but what brings a poor work life balance in the first place?
What Causes a poor work life balance?
Here are a few reasons which can cause a poor work life balance –
Increased responsibilities at work
The most obvious reason is the increased responsibilities at work. As during this pandemic, very fewer people have access to work so the workload to others has increased. In general also, with the responsibilities, comes the increased amount of work making it really tough to save some personal time.
Saying “Yes” every time to everyone
Many times we think denying any work will put a bad impression on others and we keep on saying yes to other’s tasks even if we don’t have the threshold. This causes extra hours of a workload than usual and hence creates the stress to complete the whole work on time.
Lack of self-discipline
We do understand what is right and what is to be done. We make decisions to do everything on time but we don’t often stick to it and that’s where we lose our balance. This is a result of a lack of self-discipline. Procrastination also plays a major role here.
Poor Time Management
Poor time management has the root cause of things getting messed up many times. Estimating time wrongly for any work causes interference in the time slots designated for some other work. The same goes on and hence creates a disbalance in everything that we have planned for the day.
Increased responsibilities at home
Work from home means staying more hours at home and hence you are indulged in more than usual home chores. It consumes a large amount of unexpected time from your schedule.
What happens when we don’t practice a proper work life balance? Here we go-
What are the impacts of poor work life balance?
Causes serious health problems
Long working hours can lead to many physical health problems like headaches, body pain, heart failure, strokes, etc. It also affects our mental health and can cause problems like insomnia, irritation, anxiety, depression, stress, and so on.
Can Be Fatal sometimes
Research says that working overtime can cause our health conditions to go worse and can even be fatal in some cases. So we must pay attention to it to ensure a healthy and better life.
Affects our relationships
Due to the high workload, we are left with no time to enjoy quality time with our loved ones, with our family, with our friends. It simply cut us from our social life. This affects our personal life very badly and we are left with no choice to deal with it.
Decreases productivity
Continous work makes our mind unfocused, zoned out, or even irritable many times. Therefore it becomes the reason for our decreased productivity that affects both personal and professional life. It is highly required that we take a brief mental and physical break from work and release our mind for some time in order to come back on track.
No personal development
When we are indulged too much in our work we don’t have time to spend on ourselves as well. That means we don’t get to work on our skills and develop our personal strengths which are very important in today’s world to stay updated.
Now as we have looked into the consequences of a poor work life balance, let us move to our next section to explore how can we overcome this and maintain a good work life balance.
How to improve work life balance? – 5 Tips
So far following the article you saw all about work life balance, its causes, and its effects. Do not get worried about it. A better work life balance can be achieved with some of the things performed in a proper manner. So now is the time to look for the solution. I have mentioned here the 5 most simple yet effective tips for this.
Learn the art of Prioritizing Things
We must learn how to prioritize things so that it doesn’t interfere with others and also we have sufficient time for everything such as work, family, friends, and self. It will fix the priority for the things to be done in order and we do not have to worry about creating a balance among all.
Set boundaries and work hours
Set a boundary for everything whether it’s your professional or personal life. Do not let anyone of them intertwine with the time period and place designated for another. It will allow you to focus on one thing at a time and you won’t feel in a hurry for anything. Rather you will enjoy both your personal as well as professional life.
Know that not everything is necessary
Understand, not everything is necessary to spend our time on. Try avoiding such things which are not necessary to save some more time which can be used more productively. Wasting time on silly and unimportant things like social media and all will only cost you the valuable time that can be used for spending quality time with your family, friends, or on yourself. Also, avoid procrastination.
Take a break
As I have mentioned above, if you work for longer hours, it starts losing its focus and concentration power. You will no longer feel energetic and won’t be willing to work. It is highly suggested to take breaks. Go on a vacation. Enjoy your life and boost up your energy. Do not forget to switch off your office phone after giving proper notification.
Make time for yourself
It was all about finding time for work, family, and loved ones but did you ever think how important it is to get some time for yourself? The work life balance gives you an opportunity to relax, introspect, know where you are going. It gives you a way to work on yourself, pursue your hobbies, and live your dreams.
Conclusion
We will do a quick recap of what we see about the work life balance. Work life balance is a condition that gives us the flexibility to live and enjoy both our professional and personal lives. Lack of this balance can create many problems in our lives like mental, physical health problems, poor relationships, and decreased productivity.
Therefore, it is really important that we find a way to cope with all these problems in our lives to live in harmony, peace, and good health. Here are the 5 tips to maintain a work life balance-
- Learn the art of Prioritizing Things
- Set boundaries and work hours
- Not everything is necessary
- Take a vacation, Don’t be afraid to unplug
- Make time for yourself
Hope these tips save you from the bad impacts of poor work life balance especially during this lockdown. Be in touch with SocialMirror for such interesting posts.
Stay Happy Stay Safe!
