By: Hadley Roy
Achieving work-life balance can feel like an impossible task. If your goal is to optimize work-life harmony this year, here are three quick tips to help you get ahead – plus a big question to ask yourself if these and other tips aren’t working.
- Set Boundaries (with easy ways to maintain them)
Since the advent of the smartphone, we’re all connected all the time. This is a blessing and a curse. For a lot of workers – especially salaried knowledge workers – this hyper connectivity can feel stifling. To avoid burnout and optimize your work life balance, set clear boundaries between work time and personal time. This can be something as simple as committing to a lunch away from your desk with a good book or magazine to read and setting a firm end time to your work day. If you have Teams or other work apps on your phone, use a different notification sound for these than your personal apps, so you know which ones need your attention after hours. And if you have a smartwatch, consider disconnecting notifications for your work apps so that your emails don’t follow you on a jog or a family outing!
- Take Your PTO
We all feel the pressure to be the ultimate employee, but workplaces provide PTO for a reason! Everyone needs to rest and recharge now and again. So take your time off and use it for things that truly recharge you. That might be an amazing trip to the beach with your kids or a quiet weekend at a vineyard with your significant other. It might mean taking a week to get out in nature where you don’t even have a cell signal. Just be sure to use the time and focus on genuinely recharging while you’re off.
- Learn to Ask for Help and When to Say No
Understaffing is a major challenge in almost every industry today. It’s likely your company faces these issues as well. This can cause scope creep in many roles and excessive or untenable workloads for some professionals. Learning that you don’t have to magically do it all can provide huge benefits for work-life harmony. If you aren’t sure how to complete a task or know you’ll need assistance from another department, get ahead of the problem and reach out early. Encourage your employer to create a culture of collaboration and respect where anyone can speak up if they’re up against an impossible deadline or dealing with a project so far outside their usual duties that they’ll need to lean on another specialist for help.
Understanding breaks and boundaries, taking your allocated time off and learning to ask for help and when it’s appropriate to turn down a task will do wonders for helping balance work and life responsibilities. But sometimes these and other tips don’t work. Which leads to one final suggestion:
- Evaluate Your Current Role/Industry/Career Path
There is always a chance that you simply landed somewhere that no longer works with your responsibilities and your lifestyle. And there is nothing wrong with making a pivot! If your life-stage really needs work from home but your employer insists on four days in the office, it may mean that true work-life balance can only be achieved by finding another option. If you love your current position, but worry management responsibilities will up your hours and start to infringe on personal time and responsibilities, talk to your manager and find a solution to stay put and keep doing amazing work. Ultimately, work-life balance is in your hands. And if simple tips and tricks aren’t cutting it, don’t be afraid to take the next step and evaluate bigger changes to achieve the harmony you deserve.
Hadley Roy H. is an Analytics Manager at Campbell Ewald, where she specializes in user experience optimization and creative analytics. She also runs @Just_Had_Tea on Instagram. Hadley lives with her husband, their 13 houseplants, and two sourdough starters in Southeast Michigan.
