Some time ago, we could clearly differentiate between our workspaces and our personal lives. We could balance our work responsibilities with our free time. However, today, with work invading our homes and turning them into offices, gyms, cinemas, restaurants, and even bars, finding that balance has become a little more complex.
To delve deeper into this topic, we spoke with Blanca Mery Sanchez, a master in neuroscience and writer, who will give you tips to improve well-being at home and work. Stay tuned! and learn some tips to balance your work life with your personal life.
Personal and professional life: always make a difference
Let’s start with the basics: the feeling of always being on the go is a huge obstacle to achieving a proper balance in our lives, right? The key is to understand that it’s not just about balancing life and work, but about having a balanced life in which we are aware of every moment: fully enjoying meals, having fun in our recreational activities, and being responsible and giving our best in the workplace.
We used to leave our workplace on time to avoid endless traffic jams and arrive in the shortest time possible to carry out our activities. Now we see that time as extra to finish work tasks.
The good news is that today organizations are clear that to guarantee the mental health of their employees they must contribute to balancing the scales between work and personal life.
Consequences of an imbalance between work and personal life
If you spend more time at work than usual, you should think about your personal health and well-being. We know it can be tempting to rush through everything you have to do in your day-to-day life. However, if you spend too much time at work, your personal life can suffer, including your interpersonal and family relationships.
Lack of balance in life can trigger “anxiety, exhaustion, and toxic stress in people. In addition, it can result in postural problems due to working in inappropriate spaces, such as the bed, and in greater fatigue due to the lack of differentiation between rest times, such as lunch, and work outside of working hours,” explains Blanca Mery.
However, tiredness and fatigue are not the only consequences of this imbalance. For the Mayo Clinic, not keeping to schedules and not achieving a balance between work and personal life can also cause:
- Health problems: Many health problems are caused by the level of stress that people handle at work and its consequences can affect the immune system and worsen any disease.
- Losing time with friends and family: When you work a lot, you can lose track of time and that will cause you to miss important family events or dates. In addition, not having time for interpersonal relationships can make it difficult to form lasting relationships or friendships.
- More worries: Working overtime on your work activities will increase your responsibilities and with them your worries and personal challenges to complete all assigned tasks.
Tips for achieving work-life balance
Setting boundaries is essential to maintaining control of the situation and preventing stress from overwork. According to Blanca Mery, one effective way to achieve this is to divide work and personal spaces. For example, avoiding working from bed or in pajamas, and choosing a different place to eat lunch, away from the work area, helps to signal to our brain the separation between work and leisure time.
Also, keep these other tips in mind:
- Try to manage your time, optimize it, and organize it: Dedicate an exact amount of time to your daily tasks.
- Make a weekly list of your daily tasks: whether family or work-related. This will help you focus.
- Don’t take work home with you: Although it’s a bit difficult to do so at the moment, set schedules for your work activities. Once the time is up, try to disconnect.
- Limit access to your corporate email: Don’t check your emails during non-working hours.
- Try to focus and not procrastinate: But remember that most people can only maintain peak concentration for a maximum of 90 minutes, according to the Mayo Clinic. That’s why we recommend taking active breaks during your workday.
The importance of work-life balance
In many companies, strategies focused on employee wellbeing are being implemented. These include access to meditation tools, book analysis platforms, and brain gym programs, as well as “micro-breaks” – five-minute pauses that allow people to lie down and reduce the intensity of their brain waves to recharge and return to a calm state,” explains Sánchez.
Some companies are already taking steps to contribute to the work-life balance of their employees. Here are some of them:
- Some companies give an additional day or week of vacation, which they spread out throughout the year.
- Other companies choose to be more flexible with their schedules and implement continuous work days on Fridays so that their employees work until noon.
- They encourage their employees to participate in physical activities such as tournaments and marathons.
- They make agreements with different gyms to reduce the cost of monthly fees and membership.
- They implement work from home or home office at least 2 days a week.
- They promote punctuality in arrival and departure times among their collaborators.
Likewise, the creation of psychology programs to take care of the mental health of the collaborator.
