Balance between Work and Personal Life
Work-Life Balance. How to Find Balance between Work and Personal Life?
The psychologists started talking about balance between life and work in the eighties: this is when the rhythm accelerated critically, and more and more people began to feel the lack of time.
A boundary between the personal and professional has blurred — at some moment it has become not clear when the work ends and the leisure begins.
More and more people become involved into the “rats races”: the endless pursuit of personal efficiency, success, wealth. In this predatory, inexhaustible stream, the emotions and impressions of the present have often been replaced by the goal-setting.
«It will be better tomorrow».
As a result, each third citizen suffers some form of depression not even knowing about it.
The situation is aggravated by a social attitude: “To take rest is to be lazy. Free time equals missed opportunities”.
What is Work-Life Balance
“Work-Life Balance” — is a harmony between the time set for work and other life aspects: hobbies, rest and so on. You could run forward and work flat out for a long time, but only a balanced way of life lets you preserve your productivity, health and stable motivation.
If your manager or you yourself destroy your personal life with stresses and overtime work – dissatisfaction, problems with health, prostration and professional frustration will follow them right along.
London Hazards Centre has conducted an interesting research which showed that now the work process is considerably more intensive than it was 10 years ago. Workaholics divorce, lose contact with their loved ones, experience less positive emotions, frequently oppress their own desires… This jeopardizes both psycho-emotional and physical health.
For this reason large companies started offering their employees the alternative work formats: home office (distant work), part-time employment or free schedule. They also introduce the recreation areas into the office space, give an opportunity to bring pets to work, create «sleep capsules» and try to base not on the amount of hours, but on the tasks set.
But outer measures are half the battle, and the main responsibility for the balance between personal life and work lies with ourselves.
«Does it concern me?»
It used to be difficult to “take” your work home, which helped to hold the boundary between the personal and professional. Digitalization and mobile technologies availability led to the erasing of this thin line.
How often do you check your work mail or answer the calls at home?
Do you have time for your favorite hobby, dinner with your beloved or going to the cinema with your friends?
Are you trying to “push”, so that later you could have more spare time?
Even if you have answered negatively, remember: the illness does not always have pronounced symtoms.
Yes, it may seem that this all is not about you. But besides open workaholics there are people who just follow the socially approved standards: go out with a company on Friday night, spend a week-end with family, make some gifts to each other, go into a small tour or on a vacation… All this is semblance which doesn’t make life less grey.
How to Achieve Balance between Work and Life
The firs step to determining balance is to understand what you actually want. Make a list assigning each wish with its own label:
- family and loved ones;
- socialization;
- hobbis and interests;
- work;
- health.
When all your wishes have been put down, you should determine their correlation. It shouldn’t be equal.
Some people feel really comfortable in work: their desires are connected with business, professional realization and so on. For them absence of personal life, children and spouse is not a stress.
But maybe you have dreamt all your life to have a big family, and this is your main priority, a parameter without which you feel unhappy.
For this reason, “skewness” to any side is totally normal. The main thing is to be honest with yourself and separate real needs from imposed, visible, illusory.
Make a pie chart of your personal life and career, keeping in it the proportion of your desires in each life aspect. Distribute time.
For example, it is comfortable for you to sleep 7 hours a day, so other 17 hours should be distributed in the required proportion. You are a workaholic, and work is at the first place for you. Your favorite hobby (let’s say, singing) is at the second place. One more of your interests is sports, and it’s important for you to keep fit. Friends are not so important for you, but you want to maintain warm relationships and give enough attention to your elderly parents.
Here is what you’ve got:
- 35% (about 6 hours) — work;
- 20% (3.5 hours) — hobby;
- 20% (3.5 hours) — family;
- 10% (1,7 hours) — sports;
- 5% (about 1 hour) — socialization
These are rough numbers, but they help to plan your day taking into account your real desires. If you follow the comfortable proportion, you will be happier. The main thing is not to try to “play robot”: keep in mind that the balance between career and life could be flexible.
That’s why you don’t have to make desperate attempts to be everywhere and at once – if you lack something in life you can change your scheme any time.
Personal life is your personality’s life. Fill it with things important for you, not for your surroundings. The main condition for harmony is to tell the truth to yourself and not to postpone real yourself “for tomorrow”.
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