Manage work life balance with no regrets

Boundaries between work and home were once clear.  At the end of a work day you packed up your things and left.  Once you were out that door, you were off of work.  This was easy and made sense.  You were either physically at work or physically at home.  You didn't have a cell phone.  No one at work could call you to ask you a question.  Send you a quick text to see if you had an update.  As you to review a document quickly.  You didn't have a laptop with Wi-Fi that would let you pull up that PowerPoint deck and make a quick update for your boss's presentation tomorrow morning.  When you left the office you were off of work.  

Today however, those lines are blurred.  People feel a need to reply to calls or texts immediately.  Coworkers and bosses call you at all hours to ask questions.  They pretend to apologize for calling "So late" or "So early", but the fact is they're working right then and just want to move on to the next thing they need to get done.  It's easier to call you than to face the reality that they might not be able to complete their task right then and there or that it might be turned in late.  

As people have started to work from home more and more, especially in 2020, these lines between work and home have become more blurred than ever before.  It is important to your health, performance and personal life that you work to strike a balance between work and home and set clear boundaries. 

Risks of overworking

Burnout is one of the top risks.  Burnout was first identified by the American-German psychologist Herman Freudenberger.  He found that he himself began to suffer from working too hard and coined the term burnout.  The first sign of burnout is exhaustion.  A chronic feeling of both mental and physical exhaustion.  You find yourself constantly tired.  Conversations with peers, superiors and customers become exceptionally draining.  You eventually develop an unhealthy cyniscysm toward work.  As your exhaustion increases, so does your level of stress.  This can lead to irrational feelings of angriness toward work.  Things that should be minor annoyances become huge irritants that may cause you to lash out. Finally your performance suffers.  The combination of chronic fatigue and apathy toward work take their toll.  You go through the emotions but your heart isn't in it.  You realize you're not meeting expectations and might decide to work even more to pick up the slack.  This can actually reduce your performance further.

Health problems.

Constant fatigue I not healthy.  You may find yourself become sick more often.  That cold that you got once a year for a few days no lingers for a few weeks.  Oh, and you get it more often.  You struggle mentally and may find yourself depressed.  Existing conditions that you have managed well, start to become a problem.  Your body is tired and doesn't have the energy and resources to overcome what ails it. 

Lost time

This is the one you'll regret the most.  If you're constantly working you're going to start to miss things at home.  At first it's something small here or there, but overtime can become the rule.  You start missing important dates.  You don't go to your kid's school play.  You spend half of thanksgiving dinner working on that data analysis project.  Your friends and family start to become alienated from you.  If it goes on long enough your friends and family may come to resent you. 

No one will ever be on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time analyzing performance results.  They won't be thinking about that PowerPoint presentation they could have put a little more polish on.  No.  If they spent their life overworking, they will be thinking about those all those missed moments and feeling regret.

What do you do? Set limits!

Create clear boundaries between work and home life.  When you get home, turn off your cell phone and focus on your family.  If you can, consider getting a second phone line and set it to do not disturb outside of work hours. Put trust and faith into those that you work with to find solutions on their own.  And if they can't?  Don't worry.  That problem will be there tomorrow and you'll be able to solve it to gather.  Plus if they can't finish their work, they get a little more work life balance right there.

Learn to say no!  In fact, saying no can often be better for your career.  People have a tendency to say yes.  In fact, people are wired to say yes.  We generally want to please other people.  We're pack animals after all.  That can lead to saying yes to anything that comes your way.  Some folks desire to please, or their sense of responsibility are so high that they will gladly accept every single task that comes to their desk, even if it isn't their responsibility.  This may seem like a model employee but boss's should be on the look out for this and coach against it.  Overworking leads to performance problems.  At first it all seems fine, but over time you miss details, become stressed out and quality drops off.  To avoid having more on your plate than you can handle.  Say no.  Learn more about that in our previous article, Earn more recognition by doing less.

Forget it.  It doesn't matter.  Let's be honest.  Not too long ago, if you didn't finish that presentation by the end of the day and had to complete it tomorrow it was fine.  The company didn't go bankrupt, the seas didn't dry up, fire didn't reign down from the heavens.  No, none of that happened.  In fact, nothing bad happened at all.  The next day you got to work, with fresh eyes and a fresh attitude and knocked out the work even better and faster than if you had dragged on completing it the night before.  It's ok to take a break.  In fact you need it.  Just like you have to recharge your phone, to keep it going, you need to recharge your body.  Take care of yourself and remember that it will be ok if it gets done tomorrow. Or next week.  Have vacation time saved up?  Go on vacation without stressing about work. 

Have you ever struggled with work life balance?  Have you never struggled?  Do you have other strategies to keep yourself balanced and based?  Tell us all about it below!