5 Ways to Improve Your Work-Life Balance

It’s supposed to be your one year anniversary dinner with your significant other, but why are you still responding to that email from work? This is just another example of the downside of today’s improved communication technology: the line between working and living gets blurred as you no longer need to be physically present at the workplace to get work done. But not meeting your work-life balance could make you feel burned out, which is actually more unproductive. Even though there’s never a perfect 50/50 allocation between personal and professional lives, you can still optimize your time management and work skills so that you’re able to clear away your to-do lists and still have extra time to enjoy yourself. Here are the five best ways — tried and tested — to help you find that perfect balance between work and play.

1. Manage Your Time

The most important way is better time management, which can be achieved easily by setting and prioritizing tasks in your calendar on a weekly basis. However, even with a planner or iCal reminder, it’s important to allow yourself some flexibility to adjust to smaller, last-minute tasks. Scheduling helps you to visualize the overall picture of what your week would look like, which in turn makes tasks easier to understand and achieve.

2. Commit to Your Task

Setting tasks smartly isn’t going to get you anywhere if you don’t devote yourself into completing them. Breaking a task into smaller and simpler to-do’s can be a great motivation booster and kickstart the momentum of productivity. Another useful procrastination-killing tip is to reward yourself after completing a task. One extra episode of The Crown for one item off the checklist? Sounds like great motivation to us!

3. Know When To Turn On/Off

Whether you are working in an office or from home, knowing when to work and when to take a break is very vital. Not only will this seperate your professional life from a personal one, but it could also help you to stay committed to your tasks with a defined working and resting time frame. Set a reminder for these time frames so you can be completely focused on a task, then later enjoy a well-deserved break.

4. Clarify and Simplify

These two strategies go hand-in-hand. Clarify makes sure that you know exactly what you’re doing or working on to avoid wasting time and energy. Simplify, meanwhile, involves making things as least confusing as possible in order to save time and unnecessary effort. Try downloading one of the many productivity apps on your phone or tablet and feel the difference of working efficiently!

5. Take Good Care of Yourself

Last but not least, it’s important to make time for yourself. Prolonged working hours can leave you feeling drained, so take care of yourself both mentally and physically to avoid burning out. A good book, time at the gym or even a short vacation can help you reset before you tackle the rest of your load.