Work – life balance: Does it exist ?

“You always have time, you just don’t spend it on other things.” – Chris Bailey

A while back, achieving a work – life balance was easy. There were set times for work that were strictly adhered to. In today’s world, especially with the working from home lifestyle and technological advancements, everything has changed.

Have you seen those memes or videos where someone is on vacation inside a swimming pool but has a laptop beside them to deal with some emails or is making a work call in the pool?

When you sleep where you work, it is very easy to take your work to your bedroom, work while you cook or attend a meeting and do a small chore at the same time. You will even find yourself attending a meeting as you travel or while you are driving. We have all been guilty of doing some impromptu work because it’s easy to do so.

Eventually, we feel overwhelmed – the work never stops. This is true, work never stops, it’s endless, but if you don’t pick a day to relax, then your body will pick it for you. Human beings are not machines. This is a fact we forget every so often.

There are few things we can do to achieve a work – life balance. All it takes is realizing that we need rest as much as we need to work to achieve our life goals. Both work simultaneously.

Set your priorities

It’s important to set priorities. What is important now? What can I do later? Can I delegate some work to someone? Can I block my time to finish an assignment? Always ask yourself questions whenever you are doing a task.

You can control this

Determine what you can control. You can control when you have some meetings, time spent on social media and news websites, phone alerts and even emails, your thoughts and actions, how you speak to yourself, how you handle challenges, what you give your energy to. The list is endless.

Remember that it’s not an emergency. What if you see an email two hours later? Will it make a difference when you see it immediately? Trends on social media are also not as important as you thought. You haven’t missed anything even if it’s a discussion in the same niche as you are. Eventually if it is affecting your work, whether it’s clients trending on a negative or positive aspect, you will get to know about it.

You may not be able to control this

What you can’t control include; client meetings, calls from loved ones, that important event, what people are saying about your client on social media, what is happening around you, a power black out when you have an assignment due – “Kenya Power” always has the perfect timing, a social media app goes down globally when you are in the middle of a live event assignment, the outcome of your efforts, the future, the past. There are so many things we can’t control but we can control What we do next. Panic and anxiety may occur. Take a deep breath and remember there is nothing you can do about it now.

Set boundaries

Showing that you are always available will lead to future disappointments within yourself. You may blame the other person for not taking your time into consideration. But have you thought that you could be the one who didn’t set boundaries from the beginning? Replying to emails in the dead of the night even when you can schedule that email to go in the morning.

Always remember that achieving a work – life balance actually depends on you.