How to Balance Work Life and Home Life

Are You Drawing a Line Between Work and Home Life?

These days, it’s almost impossible to separate your working life from your personal life. Learning how to balance work life and home life is crucial. Work consumes so much of our life that many of us don’t even realize how insidious the far-reaching effects of this situation can be.

It’s common to hang out with colleagues at the bar after work. What do we do there? We talk about work. When we get home, we think about what’s left behind at work.

If the spouse asks how the day went, again we regale them with the gossip and unfairness at the workplace. It just never ends.

It’s no wonder so many people are stressed out and can’t find any respite from the daily work concerns. Let’s look at a few ways you can mitigate this problem and bring about work-life balance in your life.

So what can you do to try and detach yourself from work – here are some suggestions.

Try Not to Bring Your Work Home

This applies to two areas: your workload and your stress.

If you can’t complete your work while you’re at work, there may be productivity issues that you need to address. Or maybe your workload is just too much to handle.

You’re not being paid to work at home. So, it’s best to leave your work at work, and rest when you’re away from work.

Set Your Work Hours

If you’re an entrepreneur who works from home, it’s even more important that you set fixed working hours and rest hours or the two will merge and you’ll find that you just can’t switch off.

Block Out Work Commitments When You Leave Work

When it comes to work stresses, try not to bring back work problems and tell your spouse about them. You’ll just be worked up all over again and might even end up having an argument.

Block off all work commitments, stories, stresses etc once you leave work.

Don’t Procrastinate

Procrastination will only stress you out later on when the work starts piling up. It’s the enemy of success and you’ll have thoughts at the back of your mind about your workload piling up.

This will mentally fatigue you and your thoughts will still be about your work even when you’re at home. Do whatever needs to be done in a timely fashion and keep your physical and mental inbox as free as possible.

Don’t Bring Work Home

You do not want to be in a situation where you need to bring work home to complete just because you were putting these tasks off until a later date.

Absolutely No Work in the Bedroom!

The bedroom is only for sleeping and/or sex. That’s it. Doing paperwork, reading statistics, etc on the bed is poor sleep hygiene. Your sleep patterns may be interrupted because your mind can’t tell if your bedroom is a place of rest or for work.

It’s these little things that make a world of difference when it comes to drawing a line between your work and home life.

Learn to Say ‘No’

If you work a day job, learn to say no when colleagues try to pass off some of their workload on to you. If you’re free, you may help out but if you’re already tearing your hair out because of your own impending deadlines, now is not the time to do favors.

Learn to set boundaries with colleagues too, if you wish to preserve your sanity.

Maintain a Routine

Routines are great whether you have a day job or work at home. Waking up at a fixed time, starting work at the same time and leaving work at the same time will lend structure to your day.

You don’t want to spend late nights at the office catching up, or frittering away hours on your laptop at home with no real purpose.

Watch your time and energy closely. By demarcating your working life and personal life, you’ll be able to get the best of both worlds without being off-balance.