Author:
Louise Ward
Date Of Creation:
6 February 2021
Update Date:
26 June 2024
Content
Maintaining a career / study / home balance is sometimes not easy. Most adults admit that they allow work / school to influence relationships or home life and vice versa. A balance between work and home can help increase your productivity and reduce burnout. To do this, you should plan and prepare carefully to achieve success.
Steps
Method 1 of 5: Time management
Separate work and leisure activities. In this age of online research and communication, you can sit at home and get all the work done. Going to school or working remotely gives you even more flexibility. However, the downside of this utility is that work or study can interfere with daily life and / or family activities. It can be difficult to focus on one issue when you can do things whenever you like. Moreover, if you do not arrange housework as well as professional work, you will be difficult to switch from work to home. To solve this problem, you need to prepare yourself a separate office from the outside.
- If you work or study online, you can complete assignments at a library, cafeteria, or corporate community for students or online workers. When you're done, you can leave the environment and move into your private life.
- If you have to work from home, you should arrange your own desk. You can equip your home office, or a corner at the kitchen table. There is no need to be too stressful sometimes working anywhere.
- If you are working at work, you should find a way to transition from a corporate to private setting at the end of the working day. For example, you can sit at your desk listening to music or an audiobook, exercise quickly, or chat with friends.
Set your preferences. In order to balance work and life effectively, you need to define your priority tasks. So, when you have an emergency, you will know what is important to you.- Make a list of important things in life. You can list things like family, relationships, work, and spirituality. Alternatively, you can list in the areas of volunteering, being physically active, maintaining social relationships or other passions.
- Look at the list and rank the items by importance, starting with # 1 being most important, # 2 being second most important and so on.The ratings aim to prioritize so you can work hard to organize the important items into your daily and weekly schedule.
Make a schedule and try to stick to it. If a week goes by and you have not yet determined what day to complete, you should take a week to keep a record of your activities. After a week, you will have a clear distinction between work / study and home life or chores on your schedule.- You can schedule a weekly schedule that includes continuous activities such as work, school, temple, and social activities with one-off events. Then, before you make your daily to-do list at night, you need to complete all of your priority tasks.
- As for your daily schedule, you should highlight the most important things to do for the day (in addition to work or school activities). These can be presentations or personal activities such as a dental visit or a daughter's dance performance.
- You can make two separate lists if one is a bit confusing - one for important tasks and the other for family activities. By completing 3 to 6 tasks per day, your productivity will improve dramatically.
Resolving delay. Procrastination is the cause of the imbalance. Your work and life will be turned upside down because you often take time to finish work. This causes you to work late, or distracted you from work due to your personal factors.- One way to help you deal with procrastination is to write down why you're in school or pursuing a career. For example, if you want to help people, you can get the job done with the ultimate goal that they're helping you achieve your goal. Keep this list at work when you feel mentally unmotivated.
- Another way to deal with procrastination is to break down the workload. This will make you feel less pressured and motivated by completing small items.
Eliminate annoying elements. You will find that your time and productivity are being affected by too many distractions. Research estimates that most people take 20 minutes per hour just to deal with unexpected distractions. As a result, it will take you two hours a day to try to focus only after you are distracted. If you can limit the distractions of your work, you can prevent them from interfering with your personal life. You can follow this advice to get rid of the annoying factor:
- Focus on work that is important instead of urgent. Urgent work is only for coping, while important tasks are proactive
- Turn off phone or computer notifications
- Clean and tidy workplace
- Put your phone away
- Close unused programs
- Drink water, snack or go to the bathroom during recess to limit distracting activities
Develop creativity. No matter how much effort, sometimes one of the "worlds" (world career or life) will demand a lot from you. You should learn to be creative and figure out how to deal with urgent priorities but still keep meeting the needs of other activities.
- For example, you might have to work overtime every week and don't have time for your partner. To make up for the love, you can prepare candlelight dinner or watch movies together on the sofa in the evening. These activities do not take much time and help the two become more connected.
- You can skip big projects or share time with other colleagues to reduce workload and spend more time with your relationships and family. If you can't cut down on work time, you can plan to take a walk in the park with your family or take a loved one to work grounds during lunch break.
Method 2 of 5: Set boundaries
Assess situation. While trying to maintain balance, there will sometimes be situations where harmony is needed, especially if you have children. Evaluate your life and work to identify situations where the two issues need to be combined. Think about your loved one and your personal responsibilities. How much care does your family members and duties require while you are at work?
- For example, if you have young children, you may need to arrange work times that match your parenting schedule. Or, if you are the primary caregiver and work from home, temporarily put your work aside and spend time with the children when needed.
- Sometimes work has to dominate private life. For example, if you are a healthcare provider who is always on duty, there are times when you will have to cancel your chores to do your job.
Always protect your health. Needs of work, study, or life are very easy to mask your physical training needs. Unfortunately, neglecting your medical condition can lead to serious consequences, such as missed work or school, and being unable to attend social or family events. The pressure to complete work makes the mind stressful, and if prolonged, it will negatively affect both physical and mental health.
- To reduce stress and stay in good health, do some physical activity a few times a week, such as joining your company sports team, walking around the block with loved ones, or going to a room. practice locally.
- In addition to exercise, you can reduce stress by eating a balanced diet every day, getting enough sleep, and pursuing hobbies.
Maintain a passion. When work, studies, or relationships require time and dedication, we tend to give up our interests in an effort to meet these needs. The problem here is that giving up the hobby will make you more stressful in work and in life. Take time to entertain yourself and continue participating in social activities or a long-standing passion.
- Give yourself a break by pursuing a hobby after completing large workloads.
- Another way to stay passionate is to add to your schedule. Add the time to attend a ceramic making class or book club to the same schedule as when arranging professional work or family duties.
Learn to say "no". You may feel a bit rude or selfish at first, but over time you will find that turning down certain jobs or opportunities will take the pressure off a lot. Only say "yes" to requests that meet your priority and do not interfere with your fixed schedule. Here's how to say "no":
- Show sympathy for the importance of the request by "It sounds like a good opportunity, but ..."
- Explain in detail, such as "To be honest this is beyond my knowledge" or "I have too much work to be done on time."
- Recommend alternative solutions. For example, you could say "I don't have this ability, but do know a suitable person".
Reduce workload or family responsibilities. If your career and life are always taking up all of your time, make a decision to minimize it. Otherwise, you will always be in a state of pressure and discomfort. A life assessment to determine which areas need to be reduced.
- Do you often have to run to resolve emergency tasks while at home? The boss has assigned the task at the last minute? Can you afford to work less? If the majority answer is "yes", then your career may have been too deeply involved in your personal life, but you might want to try talking to your boss about reducing working hours or workload.
- If you work while taking care of your baby, reduce your working time to feel more satisfied. Research has shown that women generally feel happier cutting off work time to look after their family.
- Does your partner or partner constantly bother you while you are at work because of small problems at home or at home? Declining productivity just because you spend the night with friends or your partner? Do you have to quit work to do the chores or do too much housework? With just one "yes" answer, your personal life can have an impact on your work. You should decide to set limits on the factors that often interfere with your career.
Method 3 of 5: Social Media Management
Separate professional and personal information. Social media is becoming an indispensable part of everyone's career and life, so it is difficult to separate these two areas. If you are using media for work and home life, you need to set boundaries to keep track of online information that is relevant to you.
- Many people choose LinkedIn for career or research connections and Facebook or Instagram for communicating with friends and family.
Clear rules on how to manage personal and business data. If you work online, you need to understand your company policy for the separation of personal and business data. Some companies provide employees with completely separate equipment (eg phones and computers) for work purposes only. Some other companies may allow the use of personal devices.
- Learn the rule of this matter. In addition, you should also back up personal data, such as contact information, photos, and music.
Set specific time to visit and be active on the internet. If social media is part of the job, you will find yourself spending too much time compared to your actual work time accessing the internet. Logging in a few times a day or every time notifications appear will also affect your work and life.
- Take the time to "escape" from the virtual world for a few hours a day. Or communicate with friends who follow online for a set amount of time of the day, then sign out to do more.
Method 4 of 5: Work from home
Set up fixed working hours. Maintaining a fixed daily work time while working from home is not easy, but it will help you to clearly separate work and home life. Choose actual working hours and strive to comply. For example, you could work Monday through Friday from 8am to 4:30 pm.
- Do not let working hours interfere with private time. When it's time to stop working, stop working, turn off your computer, and step away from the corner.
- Arrange work time to match family life. For example, you shouldn't work on weekends if you plan to do something.
Dress like going to work even when working from home. Change your work clothes in the morning and stay home at night. Putting your pajamas to work on only makes it difficult to transition to your work hours. This is the same as bringing office clothes at night.
- Get up 30 to 60 minutes before work to get dressed for the working day.
- Change office clothes at the end of the workday. For example, you could change into your pajamas or jeans and a t-shirt.
Lunch break. When working in the office, take a lunch break and ask someone to remind you. However, when working from home, you will tend to forget about lunchtime and indulge in work through lunch or eat at your desk. Instead, get into the habit of taking a lunch break during your workday.
- Set a lunch break every day. For example, you could have lunch from 12:00 to 12:30 daily.
- Ask a relative or spouse to remind you to take a lunch break. If you're worried about forgetting your lunch break, ask a friend or relative to announce your lunch break.
Do not do housework. You will get caught up in chores while taking a break or making a work call, but this will mess up work and home life.
- Do not do housework or anything unrelated to work while taking breaks. If you need to get your chores done, write it down on paper and save it for the end of the day.
- Remember that everyone is different. For example, if you like folding your clothes for lunch break, you can do it!
Pamper yourself after work. Rewarding yourself for a hard day is also very important. You can go for a walk outdoors, have tea, chat with friends, or any other relaxing activity that signals the end of the day.
- Consider doing social activities after you've finished your work. Working from home can be isolated from the outside, so find opportunities to interact with others. You can chat with your partner, go for a coffee with a friend, or do aerobics after work.
Method 5 of 5: Balance child care and work
Maintain a flexible schedule. Not everyone can work on a fixed schedule, especially someone with a family. You need to get used to completing a task every 5 to 10 minutes to care for your children or having to work at night to complete a set of tasks for the day.
- You should arrange free time to balance your life and career as a parent working from home. For example, if your children stay home while at work, you might need to work one to two hours after they sleep or your spouse comes home at night.
- You can talk to your boss or client about flexible working hours to spend time caring for your children. Flexibility is not an option if your boss asks you to work on a fixed time schedule. However, if you are a contractor, you will be permitted to work at any appropriate time, day or night.
Get a babysitter. You can ask someone to look after the children for a few hours a day to complete your work. If a grandparent or relative is willing to look after your baby for a few hours a day, you can ask them for help.
- Consider what is right for you and your loved one. For example, grandparents might drop by, or take your kids over to play with her a few times a week.
- You can hire a reliable babysitter if you can afford child care. If you can't find a regular hourly babysitter, check with friends and family.
Prepare toys for your children during work. If you can't find a babysitter while you work, you need to find other ways to draw their attention to something else while you're handling your work. You can put a variety of toys in a cardboard box for your children to enjoy while you specialize.
- The toy box contains a variety of items and activities that entertain young children while you work. For example, you can prepare crayons, clay, coloring books, stickers, brain teasers, and some other toys.
- Prepare a toy box in advance and place it near the work station. You can take advantage of a shoebox or an item box and pop a few toys in the box, or surprise your kids with a new coloring book or sticker.
- You can prepare a certain themed toy box. For example, if you want to teach your children about colors, you can choose red, blue, and so on. Or, you can choose a theme based on your favorite movie, book, program, or character. of them.
Work in a room with your children. This helps you to watch over as well as create many games to satisfy their entertainment needs. For example, if you work in the home office, you can set aside a small space and cover the carpet with toys for your kids to play in the area.
- You should also learn how to talk to your children and play with them while at work. Combining work and communication with children is a skill you can practice to become more proficient.
- If there is a play area in the backyard or there is a play area in your home near the park, you can move your workplace out in the afternoon.
