4 Ways to Cultivate a Healthier Work-Life Balance
In recent years, people throughout the country, whether younger or older, academically high-achieving or more of a practical and ‘hands-on’ type, have been making more of a concerted effort to live a more balanced life between professional and personal experiences.
If you are wanting to inject some more entertainment and social activities into your working week and therefore, are looking for ways and means to foster a healthier work-life balance, then you should most definitely continue reading.
1. Introduce Exercise Into Your Daily Schedule
First and foremost, and especially throughout the cold and dark winter months, the last thing you could imagine is to rise from your warm bed an hour early to go for a run around the block each morning.
However, there are plenty of other ways to incorporate exercise into your morning routine, whether that being enjoying fifteen minutes of yoga exercise before your coffee and shower, or else choosing to walk to work rather than taking public transport.
2. Work to Live!
Even though the phrase ‘Work to Life, Don’t Live to Work’ is a cliché, clichés exist because they are accurate and following such a mantra when wanting to have more of a personal life is absolutely the best way to go.
Look to take more time off and to not display so much loyalty to your company, even if the latter goes against your impressively strong work ethic. Additionally, look into specific laws, policies and procedures to answer important questions such as can an employer deny unpaid time off and other pertinent questions.
3. Explore Hybrid Working Options
Now, if your professional role is, for example, centered in the medical world and you spend your shifts operating on patients out of a hospital, then working from home is decidedly trickier to succeed in (although on admin days, still viable).
However, for office workers and other people who essentially work independently but just in a group setting, even if your company is not yet offering hybrid and remote working options, it is certainly worth arranging a meeting with your employer.
4. Learn How to Say No!
For such a small and simple word, it is surprising how many people struggle with saying ‘no’, both in a professional and personal sense.
If you are one of those people who always seem to spend their valuable and much-needed day off from work helping the neighbor mow the lawn, a friend move house or indeed, even volunteering at a local soup kitchen, then it is time to reclaim at least some of that time back for yourself.
In the beginning, as long as you actually utter the word, you can give in to the natural temptation to qualify exactly why you are unable to take on that extra project at work, or take your sister’s children to swimming club, but as you grow in confidence, you will see that nobody actually minds if you decline.
