Is the work going over your head? 5 tips to improve work-life balance

Author: Zuzana Kocáková

Lifestyle

10 reading minutes

Work-life balance brings work and life balance into your life.

Is it even possible to achieve a work-life balance? The available modern technologies demand our constant attention and the multiplying stress of an endless working day is also being transferred into our private lives. Not only is it damaging to relationships and health, but it also disrupts the overall enjoyment of life. Read our advice on how to balance professional and private life.

Do you often find yourself putting your work life before your private life? Family, friends, hobbies and time for relaxation are subconsciously put on the back burner and the priority becomes completing work obligations. However, for mental as well as physical health, it is essential to give your body time to recover and learn how to separate your work life from your private life. These 5 tips should help you do that.

1. Get rid of excessive perfectionism

Many people tend to be perfectionists at a young age, when they spend all their free time on school or hobbies. In some ways it is much easier to be a perfectionist at this time, but over time, as a person matures, builds a career and starts a family, life gets more complicated and responsibilities add up at brutal speed. Perfectionism can many times do more harm than good, and if it gets out of control, it can become destructive to you. The key to avoiding burnout and coping with stress at work (read how to handle stress at work) is to get rid of the unhealthy desire for perfection. Instead, try focusing on precision in what you do, and let go of meticulousness for good.

2. Disconnect from the network

In order to achieve a better work life balance, try to switch off completely and give yourself digital detox. The current era has created a sense of constant availability in people. There seems to be no end to the working day and many times it transcends into personal time off as well. You just hear the sound of a notification and immediately feel the urge to check what’s going on? There are times when you should just turn off your phone and enjoy the present moment. Simple, but almost unrealistic for some. Robert B. Brooks, professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and author of a book on work-life balance called The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence, and Personal Strenght in Your Life, had one wise thing to say: “Constant incoming notifications interrupt your apparent ‘offline mode’, where you just pretend you’re not online.”This brings a kind of current of tension into your life. Forget about work and give your full attention to your family and hobbies. Make your seemingly free time actually quality time spent your way.

However, separating work and personal life is almost impossible when it comes to working from home. In this case, the distinction between work and free time is blurred and the employee is expected to be available all the time simply because they are at home. However, it may also be a problem that no law in the European Union has yet defined the conditions of home office work. “We cannot leave millions of European workers, who are exhausted by working too long and having to be available all the time, to their fate,” said Maltese MEP Alex Agius Saliba during a debate on a law that would provide European workers with more humane conditions for working from home. “The time has come to update employees’ rights to match the new realities of the digital world,” added Saliba. The European Parliament has wasted no time and has already delivered a proposal for a new law, the so-called Right to Disconnect, to the European Commission at the end of January. The new legislation would allow employees who work in the form of a home office not to respond to work emails, messages or phone calls after working hours and on weekends. European Parliament wants the law to achieve a strict separation of work and private life of employees, which would be reflected in better performance as well as the quality of their work.

3. Workout and meditate

Even if you’re busy, making time for the most important things in life is essential. Regular exercise is an effective way of reducing stress. It pumps endorphins into your body, making you feel much better. Set aside at least a few minutes each day to take time for yourself. Great undemanding activities for space and time are workout, yoga, meditation or any other activity that fulfills you. Start with deep breathing. Breathing exercises, a short 5 minute meditation or limiting your drinking of alcohol or eating unhealthy foods are the keys to a clear mind. This is an effective form of stress relief through small lifestyle adjustments.

Mindfulness, or a mindful state of mind

If you want to achieve work-life balance, feeling good about a completed work task is not enough. Take care of yourself, refresh your body, mind and soul. You don’t need to make big efforts to make these small life changes. It is quite enough to open yourself to the present moment and stop thinking about what if… To find the balance between the inner and outer world again, you need to stop worrying unnecessarily about things that you can’t control or change. Don’t have prejudices or high expectations about anything. It is not for nothing that it is said that those who expect nothing can never be disappointed. Instead, calm down, slow down and focus on your immediate surroundings. On the smells, colours, sounds, tastes and feelings and emotions they evoke in you. Live in the present and pay attention to the little things that you would otherwise overlook in the rush of everyday life. This is where the beauty and peace of a contented mind lies – in being aware of the present moment.

You can’t fool the nervous system

The autonomic nervous system contains 2 branches:

1. the sympathetic nervous system (your body’s stress response),
2. parasympathetic nervous system (the body’s response to rest and digestion).

The key to activating the parasympathetic nervous system is, for example, short meditation exercise, deep breathing or “grounding” your senses. The more often you practice them, the more you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms everything down, not only in the moment, but permanently. In time, you will notice that the parasympathetic nervous system will begin to win over the sympathetic nervous system in your life. This is also what your work-life balance can look like in practice.

4.
Venuj svoj čas ľuďom a aktivitám, ktoré ťa napĺňajú

Have you ever thought about what is most important in your life? Make a list of your priorities and make sure they truly reflect your values. Set firm boundaries so that you give adequate time to people and activities that are a high priority. This will make it easier for you to identify what you need to remove from your list and help you achieve work-life balance more quickly. If surfing the internet is sending you into a spiral where you’re wasting precious time, set clear rules to separate work from free time. You can try software like Freedom, LeechBlock or RescueTime to increase your productivity on the Internet . If some people are taking up your time, find ways to limit your interactions with them diplomatically. Focus more on relationships and activities that bring joy into your life.

5. The slower you go, the farther you will be

Imagine you want to start running and you run 10 km on the first day. The next day everything will hurt and you will probably develop a negative attitude towards running from the start and you won’t look forward to it. Drastic changes such as cutting your working hours from 80 hours a week to 40 or doing hard physical training every day without recovery are a great recipe for failure. Gradual change is healthier and more sustainable in the long run.

Is it time for a change in your life?

Work-life balance is a smart way to balance work and private life. In practice, it includes employee benefits, time off work beyond the law or flexible working hours. (Read the article on workplace environment in our company.) Preventing burnout is really key in this matter and helps to ensure that there is perfect work-life harmony in every employee’s life. Only this way can a person perform at their best and take care of their mental as well as physical health.

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Is the work going over your head? 5 tips to improve work-life balance

Zuzana Kocáková

At msg life Slovakia I take care of the company culture, events and I am part of the marketing team. I like a job where I can be creative and contribute to making my colleagues at msg feel good. I regularly prepare for you not only news and interesting things from the world of information technology and insurance, but also from behind the scenes events at msg life Slovakia.