What do you think is the most effective technique to handle work, family, and personal life? I know most of you will say — it’s impossible! How can we manage these three things at the same time? Nobody can. You see, I never said that you have to work around these three things at the same time. There is a proper system for it. If you have not integrated that system into your life, then sooner or later you will be miserable.
Lately, I have discussed the various aspects of work-life integration with you. People tell me about their experiences with this. Some of the reviews are positive and some of them are still on the journey to understanding it. Today I will be focusing on points that most of you are still struggling with. Let’s deep dive into the question - Work, family or personal life: Why not all three?
Integrating work and family-life
Don't you feel a little more at ease when you have the freedom to handle your obligations both personally and professionally? What about the other side of this, though? Additionally, combining work and life is challenging, you will feel overwhelmed and that is completely normal.
When you manage your work and other essential things in life like your family, sport and social life, household chores, volunteer commitments, a question would pop up in your mind. Why do I have to choose one among work, family or personal life: Why not all three? What you need to understand is that while it is not possible for you to pursue the different responsibilities at the same time, you may try integrating them according to your availability.
Suppose if you are to attend a work meeting and immediately after that you have a family function to attend, how will you manage these two? You need to check your priority first, so if that family function is absolutely important then you can structure your meeting for discussing the essential points only. What did you learn from this? You saved a lot of time in the meeting, all the essential topics got covered and you are now enjoying your family-time.
Remember this is just one of the ways to integrate your work and family-life.
Changing your home and family arrangements to improve work-life balance
You can improve your work and family-life by modifying the way you organize things at both fronts.
Make a list of things like this -
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Things you need to do and things you want to do, such as taking care of kids, cleaning the house, going to work and getting paid, looking after old parents, volunteering, exercising, going out with friends, unwinding, and so forth.
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Calculating how much time you spend on each of the aforementioned activities will help you get a sense of how your current work-life flexibility is doing.
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Options for change: If you have substantial freedom with time and money and are dissatisfied with the arrangement, where can you make changes?
Why you should separate work and personal life?
I often ask this question to my fellow business associates - Do you separate your work and personal life? I am baffled by the answers because they begin the answer with - “why separate work and personal life” in the first place? I cannot point to one reason to explain, there are various reasons for why separating work and personal life is so important. I have discussed this before as well. Your mental health is your first priority. When you take care of your mental health, you can easily avoid the negative effects of work-life imabalance.
Your ability to keep your personal and professional lives separate can also improve your productivity. The demand of your employers for diligent and effective workers ought to go without saying. There is evidence that extending work hours reduces productivity.
I know you are already thinking what are the major benefits of this separation? The major advantage is less burnout. Some other advantages are -
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Increase in productivity
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Increase in creativity
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Efficiency in work
Significant improvement in employee’s overall health
This is not limited to the employees only, employers can leverage various benefits from it -
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Retain the existing potential employees
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Attract top talents from the industry
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Adapt to changing market conditions
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Boost competitiveness
My purpose here is to make you aware that setting unrealistic expectations is harming you more than ever in your work and daily-life spectrum. What you read in this blog today is doable and yet there will be some days where you have to take a tough call on certain things in your life. That is part of life, we really can’t escape from them. Be resilient, do not stick yourself in overthinking and pay serious attention to certain patterns in your life that are sabotaging your health and work.
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Shellye Archambeau is determined to help you with all possible strategies to climb the ladder of success. She values your feedback. Do mention them in the comment section below.