6 ways to improve your work-life balance

For many people, a healthy work-life balance feels comparable to arriving at a state of impossible nirvana. A place where we’re able to make our way through our email inbox and never miss a parents’ evening, or where a weekend can pass by and we’re entirely present and still feeling fresh and raring to go on Monday morning. So, why is a work-life balance important? Continue reading to discover precisely why and how to treat yourself.

The importance of a healthy work-life balance

The pressures of modern life have left many people with few boundaries as personal and professional lives increasingly spill over into one another. There are adjustments and considerations to make to ensure that things on both sides don’t become overwhelming or dominate the other. 

Here are six ways you can start establishing a healthier work-life balance, and learn how to pamper yourself:

• Evaluate your lifestyle
• Establish clear boundaries
• Schedule your whole life
• Define your workspace
• Make time for yourself
• Turn your notifications off

Evaluate your lifestyle

Like anything worth doing properly, you must invest some time planning how to achieve a healthy work-life balance. Understand the hours when you’re at your most productive, where your work demands are the most urgent and when your personal life needs attending to the most as well.

Working out a ratio system for this will allow you to manage your time more effectively. If you can work out a healthy balance, you can start learning how to treat yourself better.

Establish clear boundaries

This is easier said than done, but one of the most important ways to reset your balance in life is by establishing boundaries. This means different things for everybody but it primarily sets itself up to allow you to have a better understanding of how to manage stress and how to provide a healthier work-life balance for yourself.

To start, create a time for when you do and, more importantly, do not work.

Schedule your whole life

Half of your work-life balance is everything that exists outside of your professional life. While it might feel overbearing or prescriptive to plot your free time, it’ll prove to be a valuable action in the long term. This doesn’t mean a minute-by-minute breakdown. Instead, it’s just a way of making an active space for free time to spend as you see fit, without any work interruptions.

Define your workspace

Post-pandemic, many of us moved to a hybrid model of working that merges working from home and in-office days. When physically in the office, it can feel easier to set boundaries and switch off once the working day is over. However, at home, this can be tricky because there is no commute or true ‘end’ to the work day.

Alter this by creating a defined working environment at home. This could mean creating a more conscientious desk space or making the active decision to pack away work-related objects as the working day ends.

Make time for yourself

To truly learn how to pamper yourself, you must first make time for yourself. As busy working women, it can be difficult to prioritise time for yourself. During work hours, we can feel overwhelmed by our professional tasks before running home to pick up family responsibilities until it’s time for bed. It’s exhausting and where are you meant to treat yourself?

Though we wouldn’t change it for the world, there’s always room for some much-needed alone time. Allow yourself a moment of the day, perhaps before everyone wakes up or just as everyone goes to bed, to do something for you.

Turn your notifications off

Our final tip for improving your work-life balance is to turn all notifications off, so you can truly switch off from work. Few actions can feel more empowering than simply switching notifications off at the end of the working day.

It may take some getting used to but it will transform your personal life.

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