Nowadays, working long hours, taking work back home and being completely involved with work isn’t only a thing the older manager generation does. It’s also totally en vogue with the younger generations. Such an intense work attitude doesn’t only have a huge influence on the “work” area of your live but also impacts the “life” aspects.
So much to do, so little time
Having no time and a full agenda is totally in trend right now. We are hustling, are go-getters, hungry for new adventures and spend the evening doing our eight-step skincare routine. And that’s amazing and a dream come true for so many people. But not for everyone. It’s totally fine to love your 9-to-5 job, go home fairly early and spend time with your family and friends. This working model hasn’t been the most common one over the last decade or so for no reason. As long as you are happy, it shouldn’t concern you how busy and relentless everyone else is.
On the opposite,it’s also perfectly fine if you spend a great amount of the time at work or with work related topics. If people look at you pitiful and think they have to lecture you on how to lead and improve your life, just smile them away and do what you love. And if that’s spending some more time on a project you are working on right now, there is nothing wrong with that!
There is no universal way on how to achieve work-life-balance that’s applicable for every single person out there. One’s perfect balance might bore or will mean pure stress to someone else. You have to find out for yourself, if you are satisfied and happy with your lifestyle timewise and emotionally. Shouldn’t you be happy about how your time is structured into time spend with “work” and time spend with “life”, it’s up to you to change and improve that.
The four categories
With this post, we want to show you that it’s not impossible to have a healthy relationship with your work – no matter if you work overtime or not – and that reaching your perfect work-life-balance is absolutely realistic.
The term work-life-balance includes four different categories. Three of them belong to the term life and are labelled as Family, Health and Leisure.
Family.
This category contains all factors surrounding the topics of family life – for example child care, caring for the elderly, spending time with your partner or attending family parties.
Health.
To lead a successful life, keeping yourself healthy is mandatory. Physically and emotionally. It takes time and determination to keep up with a healthy diet and to keep making your health a priority.
Leisure.
Leisure contains hobbies that do not fall in the area of family as well as making new social contacts and keeping your friends amongst you.
Work.
All sorts of work-related obligations, time spend at the office, professional tasks outside of the office as well as making new and maintaining professional contacts falls into this category.
So much stress stress stress
Stress seems to be the cause for dissatisfaction about the current lifestyle in a lot of cases. But where does this stress originate from? What factors cause the stress we experience on a daily basis? Try to go into detail and avoid the obvious response “I work too much and don’t have time to relax”. Look at the four categories we’ve established before and note the parts within each category that make you feel stressed. You’ll quickly come to realize that work is not the only source for stress at all. Social obligations and a demanding family life can add to all the pressure at work and end in a highly stressful daily life.
Writing down all the factors that cause stress for every category and then finally picking one factor out of each category that you feel confident changing to the better, will minimize the overall stress level and is one strategy to aim for the ultimate work-life balance. Actively working on the reduction of stress takes time and commitment. Don’t hurry this process and rather spend a week or even a month on a factor per category to make sure the positive effect sticks.
An Example
Leisure stress.
Emotional health is as important for leading a well balanced life as is physical health. Social pressure can lead to stress but is not always avoidable. If you feel mentally unstable, it’s important to take some time out of your schedule to spend only with yourself. Sit down for a few moments, take a deep breath and start coloring in a Mandala. Be fully in the moment and don’t let the outside world distract you. These short periods of meditation-like behaviour will bring calmness into your life and make your days less hectic and stressful. You can find the Monstera Mandala to download for free over here.
Stress at work.
You don’t work well and efficient in the morning and just can’t seem to concentrate on one thing for long? Change up your morning routine and try to get your focus back. Integrating a few relaxation exercises to your morning office routine, taking a walk to the next coffee place or adding a few new songs to your playlist can go a long way and lead to first positive results. If you do not see any positive changes after a few days or weeks, try restructuring your whole day. Find a smaller project or task you can easily master in the morning and take on the big projects in the afternoon or whenever you are most productive and efficient.
Health stress.
Don’t let your lack of willpower take over on your health and beat your inner sloth. Put a bit more exercise into your life day by day without letting it actually feel like a workout yet. Instead of taking the car for small distances, walk or ride the bike. Instead of using the escalator, take the stairs. Opt for a cereal bar instead of a chocolate bar to gain some more energy for another flight of stairs.
Stressful family life.
Even the very own family can be a source of stress. Not necessarily because of a fight or conflict but rather because of the pressure that being responsible for other human beings brings with it. Raising children to become decent people or caring for the elderly can be easier if you are not alone. Get someone else in your family to pitch in, share the pressure and responsibilities within the family or get professional help to eventually have more free time to spend doing fun things with your family.
Don’t put yourself under unnecessary pressure or let anyone stress you even more. You’ll only find your perfect balance if you do it in your style and at your own pace. You do you, girl!