It may not be easy but maintaining a work-life balance is not exactly rocket science. You should learn to carefully integrate work, family, and personal responsibilities together efficiently. Evaluate your development as you go and make the necessary changes as you go. Commit to this plan and enjoy a successful career and a healthy personal life.
1. Keep track of time consciously
One of the things that we deal with is that we tend to get lost in work easily. Keep an eye on the clock and clearly define how many hours you should be working. Make schedules and set alarms to know exactly when you should start and finish work. When the clock tells you to stop, then stop. Stick to this principle and you will have total control over your time rather than work controlling you.
2. Create time for yourself
You should learn to prioritize yourself too while you focus on work and family. Clearly define work and relaxation schedules. Include time for yourself in the scheduling. If you're working in the morning, take some time off for yourself in the afternoon or late evening. Book yourself in your calendar so there is a clear boundary between work and relaxation. Making time for yourself doesn't necessarily have to be very long that it would significantly affect your job. Sometimes a 30-minute break in a coffee shop is enough or a 15-minute break to step outside and breathe some fresh air.
3. Work smarter and not harder
Time is a non-renewable resource therefore every second that's taken from you should have more value. Constantly ask yourself how much you value your time and how much you should get paid for it. Focus on getting paid more on an hourly basis rather than thinking of an overall income for a particular job. Getting paid $200 for an hour of work is always better than working 40-hour weeks on a $40,000 annual income.
4. Prioritize
Prioritize your to-do list from the most important or time-sensitive, to the least important. Use productivity principles such as Pareto's Law or the 80/20 principle where you identify the 20% of work that gives you the 80% output rather than the other way around. Aside from making a to-do list, make a might-do list or a not-to-do list. Clearly identify one or two tasks as your main highlights, that would free up more time for you during that day or week if completed.
5. Plan everything
If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Like Elon Musk, use a time-blocking strategy to plan your day or week. Set a time on how long you should do specific tasks and get better at doing them day by day. Decide on whether you should spend 15 minutes drinking coffee or an hour. Do you need 2 hours to be in a meeting or conference, or just 30 minutes? Do you need 45 minutes to eat a meal or will 15 minutes be enough? Do you need 3 hours for exercise at the gym or would 60 minutes be as effective? Constantly include the time element for all your tasks and you will be more productive and have more time for yourself and your family.
6. Set simple goals
Lower your threshold for achieving goals. If you haven't been to the gym yet, don't set a goal of being a Gym-shark athlete straight away, instead, set a goal of being a gym-goer. If you plan on having a Saturday afternoon off to spend time with your family in the park, don't complicate it, just do it. If you plan on having a movie night and you have tons of work to do, free-up your schedule earlier that day to fit in your work or re-schedule some of the work for the next few days. Always think, "What would this look like if it were easy?". Don't forget that your time is your most precious resource and that you have total control of it.
7. Be health-conscious
Prioritize your health. Without it, you will not function properly in your work and family respectively. Exercise and eat good food. Create a habit of changing default meals to healthier versions of them. If you are a big fan of peanut butter and jelly, change that to a wheat bread with sugar-free peanut butter and sugar-free jelly. There are tons of varieties of sugar-free products at Tesco or Walmart. If you've gotten used to drinking Regular Coke, you can change that to Diet Coke or Coke Zero and you wouldn't even know the difference in taste. Constantly have an awareness of upgrading your meals to healthier versions. Good health means you can spend more time with your family and become efficient at work as well.
8. Set boundaries between work and family
Reach an agreement with your employers on the sort of jobs you will be doing. Do not commit to working late nor resort to taking work home. An employee can be replaced in an instant and no one will care, but time with your family is precious and irreplaceable. Measure how much you spend time at work and at home. Work reasonable hours and not more. Being at work all the time will make you miss precious moments that could be spent with family.
9. Leave work at work
Practice a golden rule that says whatever is off work, stays at work. Do not take work-related activities fun. Engage in more fun activities at home. Learn to shut down and be a master at organizing and re-scheduling unfinished work. If work stops at 4 o'clock but you still have unfinished jobs, re-schedule them or spread them out for the next few days. Do not stay to finish the job. Compromise on that one time and you will build a bad habit of constantly overworking and fall into that trap.
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