A majority of people consistently report that commitment to their work provides significant meaning in their lives, and contributes to their overall contentment. While a decent work-life balance isn’t a panacea by any means, its a good way to help you keep in touch with your own mental health.Īs important as it is to balance work with play, this doesn’t mean that work can’t have inherent value in our lives (even apart from the pay cheque!). Mental health issues are the leading cause of absences due to illness in the UK, costing employers tens of billions every year. Businesses increasingly recognise that this will lead to a more productive and stable (as well as a happier!) workforce.
#Work life balance definitions plus#
In fact, being a ‘well-rounded’ person is often seen as a plus by employers.
It is often crucial to being able to maintain your drive over the long-term. You shouldn’t view the ‘life’ part of work-life balance as the enemy of career success. There is consistent evidence that regularly working long hours without making time for leisure activities and socialising often leads to lower productivity, more absences from work and poorer health outcomes, along with higher levels of stress.
This isn’t just a mantra balance is key to maintaining a healthy work life.īurnout may be a zeitgeist-y topic at the moment, but it’s a very real risk if you don’t try to create some equilibrium in your life. Prioritising one thing shouldn’t be done to the complete exclusion of all others. Even if you want to go full-speed ahead at work, you need to be mindful of creating space for other parts of your life. Let’s say that succeeding in your job is your number one priority. It’s about checking in with your life at different points, and making sure that the individual parts keeping adding up to make a whole with which you are happy. You’ll probably never reach a point where you’ve got your work-life balance sorted forever. What works for you at one point in your life may not work for you at another our priorities and our circumstances change and evolve. In fact, you probably shouldn’t try to achieve it, at all. Work-life balance isn’t something you should try to achieve for the sake of it. You don’t have to get all Eat, Pray, Love about it, but it’s better to ask these questions now and adapt your life a bit, rather than come to a hard realisation down the road.
How much time do I need to spend on these activities to do them properly?.What makes me happy in each of these parts of my life?.Rather than thinking about what an ‘ideal’ work-life balance should look like, take some time for introspection. Working out what your priorities are is a good place to start. However, you want to feel that the overall balance in your life is generally right for you. There are always going to be tradeoffs that have to be made you’re probably never going to be able to do everything you want to in life. Generically, you probably want to create enough time for leisure and socialising to make life fun and interesting but not so much that your work performance suffers greatly. This is a good jumping-off point for figuring out what work-life balance could mean for you. Then reflect on what you might want to change. Think about how much time you devote to each of these, and how you prioritise them. Think of your life as a pie chart, with three main areas: Not everything will fit neatly into a single category but it’s a good starting point. It can be helpful to divide up your life into distinct areas. While everyone might have a different answer to this question, you can use a simple process to help figure it out for yourself. What that means in practice to each individual, however, is different for everyone.
Having a good work-life balance involves feeling satisfied and content with the major areas of your life and how they interact with one another. The internet is littered with tips to find that elusive formula for work-life balance, but it’s rarely that simple. It’s a discussion that’s always topical and never seems to have a clear answer. More and more of us are talking about trying to find some sort of work-life balance. It’s a subject with important ramifications for each of us, due to the impact it can have on our wellbeing, whether physical or mental. This can encompass anything from spending time with your friends and family to adventurous hobbies, or just reading a good book. It refers to the balance between the amount of time you spend at work and the amount of time you spend on the rest of your life. ‘Work-life balance’ is pretty much what it sounds like.
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