Take control of your work-life balance
Take control of your work-life balance
So you spend too long in the office, and not enough time at home. You often work through your lunch hour, and don't even take your full holiday allowance. Even when you're not at work, you check your e-mails from your mobile phone or worry about the week ahead.
So you spend too long in the office, and not enough time at home. You often work through your lunch hour, and don't even take your full holiday allowance. Even when you're not at work, you check your e-mails from your mobile phone or worry about the week ahead.
If that sounds a bit like you, don't worry. There's plenty you can do to put the life back into your work-life balance. It's all about taking control, setting limits, and communicating with your boss, colleagues, and family.
And really, it needn't be difficult. However wedded you feel to your work, a few easy steps can rebalance your priorities, so you can work efficiently and effectively, without neglecting friends, family, and your own wellbeing.
Change your attitude
Psychologists tell us that spending plenty of time with friends and family is essential to our happiness. At the same time, a good work-life balance can work wonders for our psychological and physical health. And getting a healthy work-life balance can even mean that we work more efficiently and productively.
In other words, adding more life to your work-life balance doesn't mean missing out on promotion, or having to sacrifice a good career. Many employers are beginning to realise that happy workers are good workers, and that promoting a healthy work-life balance is also good for business.
Attitudes are changing. Being first through the door in the morning and last out at night isn't the fast-track to promotion that it once was. So it's time to change your attitude, too.
Talk to the people that matter
If the amount of time you spend at work is affecting your health and happiness, speak to your boss. They may have noticed, and may be more sympathetic than you think.
If you have children under six, you have the right to apply for flexible working hours and your employer has a duty to consider your request.
Even if you don't have children, many employers now recognise that a little flexibility is often the best way to keep the most experienced staff happy, and stop them defecting to the competition. Your boss may let you work from home one day every fortnight, for example, or work to a flexitime system that makes commuting quicker and easier.
Speak to your friends and family, too, and let them know that you are trying to redress your work-life balance. They can help you stick to your goals, and stop you slipping back into bad habits when work piles up.
Be realistic
If you've been leaving the office at 7.30pm every night for the past two years and working 60-hour weeks, you can't drop it all overnight.
Similarly, if you're a few days away from a crucial deadline and still have an important presentation to prepare, it's probably not the best time to announce that you'll no longer be working past 6pm.
Be realistic. Your boss and your colleagues are used to a certain level of commitment from you. It will take time for them to get used to new arrangements.
Walk before you run. If you always stay in the office till 7pm, make it a rule that you'll leave at 6pm on at least two nights a week. If you always take a work laptop home at weekends, make a pact with yourself to leave it in the office two weekends out of four.
Make sure you stick to your new regime by arranging nights out with friends, weekends away, and other things you'll find hard to get out of, at least for the first few weeks.
Make the most of your time
By getting a better work-life balance, you'll be making the best use of your time at work because you'll be fresher, brighter and more productive.
You should also make sure that you make the most of your time away from work. So leave the Blackberry behind when you go out for the evening with friends. Rediscover hobbies or interests you had before work took over, so you won't be tempted to work at home.
If work has been your hobby for longer than you care to remember, find a new one. A great way to make sure you stick to your new work-life balance is to have a distraction that you really enjoy, and that exerts as much of a pull on your thoughts as the office.
And remember, lunchtime is your time too. Get away from your desk and spend an hour doing something invigorating, like strolling through town, going to the gym or studying. It will be good for mind and body, and the great thing is, when you get back to work, you'll feel happier with your life - and your job.
