After finding happiness and being content, managing a harmonious work-life balance may be the most elusive and ambitious endeavor for all human beings. Today, our lives are guided by emails, deadlines, conference calls, children’s exams and family ceremonies and functions, balancing them can be tricky for the best of us and nightmarish too.
So how does one manage the two worlds that mean so much to us? The Harvard Business Review carried a paper on what two researchers called the best way to deal with the work-life balance. Some of these measures can act as good guiding tools for all of us.
Have a ‘no screen time’ for yourself, where you don’t use a ‘screen’, be it the phone, TV or computer.
Define Success
First and foremost, define what success in your professional and personal life actually means for you. This is an important take-off point from which you can measure your success. It is important that we know what we expect on the professional front. Is it about personal achievement, or building a successful business or team? Or does professional accomplishment mean financial windfalls? Whatever be your metric, it is important that you define it and then measure it periodically.
Similarly, it is important for all of us to measure the metric of success for our personal lives too. What does having a successful personal life mean to you? Is it about building meaningful relationships? Is it the commitment to spending two weeks vacationing with family every year? Or is it ensuring that you don’t miss any big family event? Whatever be your measure of success, write it out and then follow it as much as possible. This will ensure that you are more at peace with your two worlds and are not constantly battling the question in your head.
Technology To The Rescue
Priorities on technology. Today, technology has pervaded our lives like never before. Mobile phones, tablets, laptops and a plethora of devices ensure that we are always wired and connected. This has meant that the physical barrier between office and the living room has come crashing down. Many of us itch to check our phones while on the dining table too. While at the same time, home pressures come and invade that important client meeting.
It is therefore important to clearly define time meant for each world of yours. Many people don’t check their mails after a particular time of the day. Have a ‘no screen time’ for yourself, where you don’t use a ‘screen’, be it the phone, TV or computer. This has ensured that I can spend quality time with my family. Whatever be your guiding principle, remember that technology plays a critical role in your two worlds. Master it; don’t let it master you.
Work Together On Your Goals
Many personal-professional lives become tenuous because of the nature of one’s job. A job that entails travelling may pay well but not be what a mother of a two-year-old would want. Similarly, a spouse may get an offer of a life-time but it would mean that the partner needs to leave a job that he or she cherishes. Such dilemmas often add to our misery since the decision one takes may take a toll on the other. It is therefore important to chart out common goals and achievements together with your partner so that when such critical decisions need to be taken, they are done jointly.
Sambav advises you to chart your own means of making your work-life and personal lives ‘work’ for you, some of the suggestions mentioned above may just be a good tool-kit for this DIY experiment called life!
