Managing Your Time for a Better Work-Life Balance

Are you feeling the demands of your job in your daily life? You’re not alone. Many people find it incredibly difficult to balance their work with their lifestyle for many reasons. Whether you’re a workaholic or worried about layoffs and cutbacks, you can have control over the other aspects in your life. You have control over the ways you bring enjoyment to your life and how much time you choose to spend worrying about work.

In order to lead a balanced life, you should work less than 8.5 hours. Evidence suggests that long work hours may impair personal health, jeopardise safety and increase stress. While a shorter workday may not be possible for everyone, there are some ways that you can add balance to your life.

Review how you use your time now

Track yourself one week and see how you spend time in all tasks and activity areas, even personal time. Do you see any room for improvement? Are there tasks that you could delegate to someone else?

Work more efficiently

Most of us spend plenty of precious hours a day procrastinating and not spending our time wisely. It’s hard to focus on the task at hand, especially when there are so many distractions and other tasks to accomplish. However, if you are more efficient with your time at work, then you’re more likely to be out of there by 5 and on your way to yoga or happy hour! Here are a few tips to help you get more work done faster:
Create a to-do list, prioritising accordingly, and stick to it.
Create a detailed timeline with specific deadlines.
If an idea occurs to you as you’re working, write it down on a piece of paper and come back to it later. Don’t get caught surfing the web because you just need to know what ingredients to pick up for a coconut curry.
Break up your tasks into smaller tasks and complete them in 20 to 30 minute chunks.
Take plenty of breaks.
Create a detailed timeline with specific deadlines.
Change your environment. Does your work station make you want to do work, or go to sleep? If it’s the latter, change it up. But continue to change it up every few months to keep it fresh.
Eliminate procrastination temptations. Keep off social media and YouTube! Have some discipline.

Schedule in downtime

As you plan your week, make sure to schedule in time for yourself and time spent with family and friends. Join a netball league with your friends, or schedule a date night with your spouse. Have things to look forward to that you won’t want to cancel for work. It’s also a good idea to have some downtime in the morning before you head to work. Whether that’s time to spend making a delicious breakfast, meditating, exercising or just reading, take the time to wake up and centre yourself before you head off to work.

Balance your work life with the rest of your life by structuring your time in a healthy way. Tap and track what you are doing now by downloading the RemindMyLife app. Awareness is key to creating a balanced life.