How to make Work-Life balance your Valentines

Your relationship with yourself is one of the most important relationships in your life, so why not make it the most fulfilling too? This Valentine’s Day give yourself the gift of balance and read on to learn about how you can begin optimising your work-life balance for a happier and healthier relationship with the most important person in your life: you!

Since focussing on this, I’ve managed to reduce my screen time by 40%, meaning I can read books, engage with family and friends and enjoy life an extra 1.5 hours per week!

Personal time & quality time

In our modern world we all find ourselves walking around with our work quite literally in our pockets. Although it’s great to be able to stay on top of emails, updates and meeting minutes, be mindful of how much time you spend on your phone versus away from it. It’s not just personal time, but also quality time that have never been more important to improving your work-life balance, so be sure to spend some hours away from your phone each day to fully engage in life. Get to an exercise class, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy being unplugged for a while!

Flexible work & the working day

With flexible work principles you can have more say over your hours, start, and end times to better fit your job into your life. Although most clocked hours follow a routine, see if there’s any room to modify your working day to better reflect the work-life balance you can thrive within. While you’re there, make sure you understand your employee holiday allowance and be sure to book your holiday days well in advance. All employees have a right to request flexible work in the UK, so make the most of the support available!

Good work-life balance & healthy work life balance

Good work-life balance, healthy work-life balance – what do these even mean? Although both are states to strive for, a key difference is that a good work-life balance tends to precede a healthy work-life balance: if your work-life balance is good, then you will be happier and healthier in the long term. A good work-life balance will look different for all of us, but a general rule is that you should find yourself with enough time in the day to engage in non-work-related activities. We all get tired after a long day at work or towards the end of a big project, but in general you should find yourself with the time and energy to have a life outside of work!

Poor work-life balance & work emails

So, what about a poor work-life balance? It’s all too easy these days to believe that you must always be hustling and increasing your hours a week, but this is exactly what your work-life balance doesn’t need! Some clues that your work-life balance isn’t doing you any favours are:

• never having time to engage in activities you enjoy outside of work,
• always being available by phone or work emails,
• living in a constant state of stress,
• missing out on sleep due to long hours.

We know that checking work emails is important, but designate time to check your emails and observe a strict cut-off point where you’ll be unavailable in the evenings so you can enjoy some time to yourself.

An Executive Assistant can help you with Inbox Management, filtering and prioritising your inbox and even responding on your behalf.

Working longer hours

We’re not going to sit here and tell you that you should never work longer hours. Sometimes we have the bandwidth to take on more at work, and that’s great! But if you’re already feeling the pressure, then don’t be afraid to decline longer hours where you can. You can’t be a good worker if you are overly tired, so learn your workplace limits and stick to them!

Work and personal life

Your work life and personal life should be two separate things. You may be friends with your colleagues and socialising with them forms a big part of your personal life but be careful not to let work socialising take up too much of your me-time. Professional and personal you are two different beings and it’s healthy to have a clear sense of where one ends and the other begins.

Remote working & the benefits of working from home

Click the image to read all about how to make working from home work for you in our article here.

If your employer offers remote working options, then experiment with finding a work environment that fits your lifestyle. Working remotely is growing in popularity as we all learn to stay better connected without impacting our efficiency at work. Maybe working from a favourite café offers a welcome change to the office? If you need peace and quiet to work, then why not make the most of working from home options? Working from home is in its heyday at the moment, so consider trying out a blend of office hours, remote working, and working from home to mix things up and keep life fresh and interesting.

Pay attention to reduce stress

This wouldn’t be a blog post about improving your relationship with yourself if we didn’t mention stress! But yes, your best work-life balance will be one that keeps your energy and motivation levels up and your stress levels down. Pay attention to where your stress comes from: is it staying on top of emails? Or maybe it’s your commute? No matter what the cause of your stress, identifying the problem is the first step to fixing it. Maybe you can limit the time you are available online, or perhaps working remotely would work wonders for your stress? See what isn’t working for you and consider changing things for the good – your relationship with yourself and your work-life balance will thank you for it!