While working from home can be very beneficial, it can become extremely nerve-racking too. If you don’t know where to draw the line between family life and work, you may soon find yourself stressed and daunted by your work.
Do you find it okay if your children play around while you attend an online work meeting? Also, do you think it is fine if you lock yourself in a room for the entire day, barring your family from seeing since you’re working?
No! Both extremes are unhealthy and will eventually cause you to feel tired, overworked, distant from your family, or all of these.
What should you do then?
To ensure you prioritize your family and work on a balanced level and do not ignore one because of the other, you need to achieve a healthy work-life balance.
This article will give you a guide to work-life balance, explaining what it truly is and why it is important.
What is home work-life balance?
Work-life balance from home, also known as work-home balance, is a term used to describe the idea that a person is managing both his work and life balance side by side. It means he/she maintains a strategic balance and middle ground between his/her family life and his/her work.
For example, a mother spends half of her day teaching school kids online. She then spends the afternoon having lunch with her kids and husband, hearing about their days, and sharing hers. And so on.
This is one way to look at a healthy work-life balance, especially when working from home. While hard to achieve, once you start managing both aspects with a sense of importance, you will have a stress-free, healthy life in no time.
How to balance work and life?
The first step thing to understand is the importance of both work and family in your life. While work is important, especially if you are the family’s breadwinner, it does not give you a free pass out of family responsibilities. For example, you can help out in house chores, take care of the kids, or get groceries.
These small tasks done for your loved ones not only show them you care, but they are also essential to your mental health. Thinking about work all the time is not the best right? Doing things other than that helps you stay fresh.
Similarly, spending time with family is crucial, but neglecting your career or work is also detrimental to your health, personal growth, and self-care.
So, how to balance home-life with work from home?
Here is how you can have the ideal balance at home:
1. Define strict work hours
The most important thing to do is draw a clear line between when your work hours start and when they end. Working from home makes you available all the time, and often, people take advantage of that.
Do not let that happen! Communicate your strict work time with your work team, and clarify that you will not answer any emails or ‘do a favor’ outside of those hours.
2. Schedule a daily routine
Create a timetable for your day every morning or at the beginning of every week. Personalize this timetable according to all that you need to get done in the day or week.
Like this, you will have a clear sense of how much you need to do within your assigned hours to work and those to home life. Nothing new will pop up at the end of your working hours out of nowhere, and you will stick to your defined timings.
3. Take breaks
Make sure you take time off to walk around, get some coffee, have proper lunch, preferably at a set time of the day and get some air. Sitting in one place for too long can be very exhausting.
4. Dress up accordingly
For work, dress up the way you would if you were going to an office. This helps freshen you up.
Once your work-hours are over, change into more comfortable, homely clothing. This gives a stronger feeling of ‘being home from work’ and helps you distinguish between the two more easily.
5. Plan your after-work hours
Even when work is done, you might feel the same. It can be annoying for hours other than work may become boring, and you might want to get work done now that you have nothing else.
Avoid this. To do so, plan what you will do after you get off of work. It could be cleaning your closet, going out for dinner, cooking at home, and getting groceries. Moreover, plan trips to the mall or movies, play with your kids, or do anything that helps you enjoy your family-life and connect with your loved ones. It definitely will feel like a pause!
6. Fix a Workspace
Do not wake up and start working on your bed right away. Make sure you define one part of your house as your fixed workspace. This can be a part of the house that you are less likely to visit outside work hours, such as a study or spare room. This way, your family will also be able to respect your workspace and hours.
7. Communicate
Lastly, and most importantly, ensure you communicate with your work team and your family. In case you need extra time for work, let your family know and apologize, if necessary, or give them the chance to understand your situation.
Moreover, spend time with your family, talk to them, share your work experiences if you like, and hear them out too while you’re at it. The key is to let your family see you love and prioritize them.
Why do you need a healthy work-life balance
Here is why you need to develop a work-life balance
- Health
To be healthy, both physically and mentally, you need to have a balanced life. Ensure that while you work hard, you also give your mind and body the time to rest. Exercise, spend time chatting with family and friends, communicate with colleagues, eat and drink healthy, and take breaks to get some fresh air now and then.
- Family-time
You get to spend quality time with your family, and you don’t take them for granted. Having good relations with your parents, partner, kids, and family is the key to a happy life.
- Sense of direction
Excess of anything is wrong. Overworking or spending too much time idle are both terrible qualities in a lifestyle. It makes you start worshipping the one thing you are focusing on, and in case you lose it, it can depress you.
For example, you spend all your time working obsessively, and then you lose your job. Your life will come to a halt, and you will be clueless about your next step. Life might even seem meaningless, and you will not have anything to do.
Therefore, to always have a sense of direction, make sure you have several things to do. Plan every day and understand that each activity and aspect is equally important, even leisure activities.
These are the seven ways you can have a healthy work-life balance. Hopefully, you understand the importance of achieving it and succeed in doing so. Have a happy and healthy lifestyle!
Moreover, if you want to know about how Acupuncture and Dry Needling helps to maintain a healthy lifestyle read our Ultimate guide: Acupuncture and Dry Needling.