Even though you are at home, maintaining work-life balance is still important. You still need to be able to focus and shut off when needed. This however, is not as easy as it sounds because we are not in our normal routine and therefore it is very hard to achieve a sensible balance. Read our blog by stress specialist Nikki Lloyd Greame on how to achieve some sense of work-life balance.
I remember years ago my go to excuse for feeling rubbish was – Work-Life Balance. It wasn’t right (whatever right was) and it was making me miserable, feel stressed and unwell. The more I strived for it the more it seems to get further and further away and the worse I felt. In the end I just gave up, I admitted defeat and decided that maybe as a single parent, running my own business and juggling everything myself – I was just not destined for this ‘mythical utopian’ idea of Work-Life Balance.
What was interesting though was the very act of giving up on it allowed me to explore the very kind of balance that was right for me. What surprised me was it wasn’t work-life balance at all – it went deeper than that.
By labelling it Work-Life balance it suggests that these are two very separate parts of an existence that shouldn’t meet. Like the sun and the moon – they should not really be seen together when the reality is very different. I’m in the fortunate position that I LOVE my work, and whilst there are days that are more challenging than others, and there are parts of it that I would prefer I didn’t have to do, on the whole I genuinely enjoy what I do. Equally, I enjoy my life, for the most part (I mean…who really does enjoy cleaning, ironing & taking the bins out?) and I like to think I make the most of my ‘non-work’ time by making sure it is heavily sprinkled with the things and people I love.
To break this down even further – when people talk about work – in relation to work-life balance, it’s generally in a negative context. The describe all the things they have to/need to do before a deadline or to please someone else, to keep a customer happy, the relentless busyness etc. There seems to be a sense of resentment that it is somehow interfering with their ‘life’ – especially when having to respond to emails at home etc. And the truth is it might be. It is worth asking yourself though – if your brain is telling you that work is a ‘bad’ thing… will you ever achieve work life balance? On average – most people spend 40 hours a week at work – or more… if you are spending 40 hours a week doing something you consider a negative experience then that’s going to exhaust you and potentially consume your thoughts even when not there. Hence – no balance.
My approach to this may not work for everyone but I challenge you all to give it a try. Rather than now seeking work-life balance… I now just seek balance. I guess if I had to give it more of a label I would call it Battery Balance. In order to keep myself as charged as possible I need to make sure both my positive and negative experiences are balanced. Here’s how:-
- Take a category in your life (let’s take work) and look at it in detail
- Break it down and identify elements of it that you love (I like to do this in a visual format like a mind map) eg: Love finishing a project, love exploring a new topic ,love designing new work
- Break down and identify elements that you really don’t like eg: Marking, coming up with new ideas, when I have to work late
- Do the same with your ‘out of work’ life – I personally it to the mind maps above – so I end up with a Positive and a Negative mind map
- Once you have done this exercise look at your results and then instead of thinking of Work-Life Balance, I just look at Positive-Negative balance. If there is a day when I know I have to do some of the things on the negative side – I make sure to prioritise something on the positive side in order to balance things out. Ideally in the same day or at least the same week.
In case you are still struggling with this concept – here are some really simple things I’ve changed to help with this:
- When ironing – I put on a comedy programme or film to keep me entertained whilst getting it done
- When doing my accounts – I plan a reward for every time I complete a specific accounting task as well as playing my favourite music whilst I do it
- When I know I have a busy week coming up – I book something in the diary (usually a dance event or a pampering session) for afterwards
After you have done your mind maps, assign rewards for the negative things and also ensure that you have both a balanced list now for work, but also a balanced list for life too. Good luck and don’t forget to check out SAMconnect for our useful wellbeing tips that might help you to rebalance when needed. Click here to find out more about SAMconnect.
