On Work-Life Balance

There are a lot of talks about the work-life balance on the Internet. Some of them may rely on facts, while others are strictly emotional. Here are my thoughts on this topic.

Why It Can Be Important

Many people complain that they do not have enough time for their family and have some personal life. It may be true in many cases, especially if work takes over half of a person's awake time. So, if a person sleeps 8 hours a day, then work that takes 8 hours a day fills half of the time!

Another common and reasonable complaint is mental and physical health issues. It also may be true, primarily when a person works a lot physically, or have stressful intellectual activities. Another consequence of such work is lower productivity and depression.

So, what can a person do about it?

Possible Solutions

The most natural solution is to simply reduce workload. In general, this is the best solution, except for the consequences. In many cases, it can lead to a decrease in income or salary.

To compensate for this issue, a person can lean to passive income instead of an active income. It can be some work-related activities, renting out a real estate, or just dividends.

Another way to address the high load issue is to optimize the work process. For example, a person can spend less time on not very important activities, define clear task priorities, and so on.

Good organization can also reduce work complexity and stress level. It is recommended to keep your activities well organized, decrease context switching, and delegate less important activities.

A person may try to maintain effectiveness by changing the work environment. Decreasing noise level, better lightning, stable temperature, comfortable furniture — all these factors can make your work less stressful.

Another hint of remaining effective is to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Bad habits not only affect health but also decrease stress level tolerance and make work harder, so a person becomes tired faster. Short breaks every hour also help a lot.

Finally, a person may optimize a schedule to spend less time on regular activities or skip them. It can include decreasing transportation time (use alternative transport of work remotely), limiting time spent on social networks, and solving procrastination issues. Other time management best practices may help too.

Summary

In the end, every person has to decide how to deal with these issues and how to maintain a work-life balance.

There are common recommendations. A person should accept issues with work-life balance, understand main pain points, and define clear steps for dealing with them. It may require a bit of courage and some effort because of expected changes, and they are almost always not easy. However, if everything appropriately planned, life should become more relaxed and more comfortable, which is the primary goal of work-life balance.