There are millions of people just like you, so don't feel like you are alone in your frustrations. Achieving a harmonious balance between the demands of home and the demands of a career can be especially difficult, but some people do manage to do it. These people focus on specific areas to balance work and life successfully.
First of all, if you need to get a better grip on separating your work and family life, then you need to set up clear boundaries for each area. This means that all of your family and personal business is conducted on family or personal time, and all of your career work is conducted at work. This sounds simple enough, but how many of us have paid our bills at our desk, then caught up on paperwork when the kids are asleep? Too many.
This is the wrong approach. When the boundaries are blurred between work and personal lives, it can become chaotic. Set up specific plans for yourself and keep focused on the job at hand, whether it is preparing for the big meeting at work, or cleaning the kitchen at home. Multi-tasking is fine, but do not play too many roles at the same time; otherwise, you are bringing home to work or bringing work to home.
Secondly, decide how to more efficiently get everything done in each area of your life. If there are numerous household chores, but there are also grocery shopping, dance classes, and soccer games, then you need a schedule of when things are going to be done. The importance of a schedule, calendar, or some tracking device for all of the activities cannot be overlooked.
Being able to eyeball the activities, whether you have it listed on the refrigerator or diagrammed on a white board, can make it much easier to cross off the completed items and focus on one activity at a time. This is so important for time management and organization. Often, when our lives are chaotic, we leave too many things undone. Stop doing that, and you will be on your way to a point where you can definitively say you know how to balance work and life successfully.
Remember, too, that it is difficult or one person to manage it all on their own, all of the time. Delegation is a skill too many people neglect to hone; the result is one person doing everything while the rest of the group stands around. Recognize the need for help, and ask for it. If home is so busy that there is no time to clean, do not stay up late to dust; hire outside help. OR better yet, give the kids some chores, with clear guidelines and expectations. At work, don't be a "yes-man" or a "yes-woman".
If there are projects piling up on your desk, and your boss is asking for more, tell him no! It is okay to do that once in awhile, especially if you rationally explain that more work will compromise the integrity of the other projects you have yet to wrap up.
So that is the key to achieving a harmonious balance between work and life. Recognize that no one person can accomplish everything, and keep your roles separated. Plan your activities, both at work and at home, with an easy to manage organizational system, and stick to it. Soon, you will be the poster child for how to balance work and life successfully.
Has the pendulum swung too far in increasing productivity at the expense of employee work-life balance? In an article titled, Americans of All Stripes Are Sicker Than They Need to Be, Paul Krugman indicated that full-time American workers work, on average, about 46 weeks per year compared with 41 weeks for full-time British, French and German workers. One indication that this is taking a toll on American workers is that it appears that more employees are taking mental health days. According to an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, more than one-third of U.S. workers say they played hooky from work over the past 12 months. Were you one of them?
One HR executive with an S&P 500 company that I spoke with said, "The gains in productivity of the past few years have been on the backs of our employees who are maxed out. As for myself, during the week I go to work and come home. If I'm lucky I have time to eat dinner, work out, shower and go to bed. I don't know where we're going to get the next round of productivity."
Need further proof? According to syndicated columnist and best-selling business author, Chuck Martin, less than 15 percent of more than 2,000 senior executives and managers thought that their lives were in balance. When asked why, many pointed to technology which has made it easier to stay connected to work.
To make matters worse, in a recent study by Randstad USA, 38% of employed U.S. adults indicated that they do not usually take lunch, 33% work overtime without additional compensation, and 31% say they work on Sundays.
What does all of this mean to you? In effect, you are now on call 24/7 including weekends, holidays, and vacations.
If moving abroad to work in Britain, France or Germany is not an option for you, then read on for some tips on how to stop this work-life balance madness.
1. Establish and communicate boundaries for where, when and how you will work. Put it in writing, share it with your boss and staff, and more importantly, adhere to it. Make sure it is something you feel comfortable with. For example, one executive I know works from 7:30 a.m. - 6 p.m. She is available via cell phone during her commute (7:00 - 7:30 a.m. and 6:00 - 6:30 p.m.) She checks email remotely once during the evening after going home and her kids are in bed. Saturday is her family day and she doesn't do any work. She checks emails again on Sunday evening and takes time to plan and prepare for her work week while watching Grey's Anatomy. The key: figure out what will work for you!
2. Control technology rather than let it control you. Blackberry, PDAs, cell phones, laptops, and remote access are tools to help you be successful, not control you. Most executives that I speak to reluctantly admit that no one has mandated that they be linked to the office 24 hours a day. Stop being a super-hero and limit your use/ abuse of technology. Try turning off your Blackberry or cell phone after leaving work or at least when you get home. Stop text messaging and checking emails during meetings - not only is it rude, but if you can't be fully present, then perhaps you don't belong in the meeting after all.
3. Use technology to help you execute your business goals. Block time for projects, planning, and strategic activities or your day will be filled with the urgent and not the important. Block time on your calendar for coffee, lunch and other types of networking meetings as it is important to "see and be seen." Schedule specific times (preferably only two times per day) when you will review/ respond to email so that you aren't constantly interrupting your work flow every time a new email arrives. Use the task list and reminder features in your email or database management tool to schedule tasks to be completed on specific days. If you find that you are frequently interrupted during time you scheduled to work on projects, planning, and strategic activities, forward your phone to voicemail or even better, book a conference room or go some other place where you can work without interruption.
In a commencement address delivered to 2,700 Oklahoma State University Graduates, President George W. Bush gave this advice, "Harness the promise of technology without becoming slaves to technology." Now that's good advice.
Both Brian Higdon & Regina Barr are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.