![]() WARNING! Be realistic about your ambitions. You can expand this to seven clock faces, one for each day of the week, if you wish. The discipline of having a clock face forces you to fit your activities into the time available, and you can see whether your ambitions are realistic. Split the day up into chunks to show how you would like to spend it: how much time in bed, how much time doing chores and other necessary but boring things, how much time working, and how much time on other things.īe specific about the other things, whether those are playing with the children, practising a musical instrument or learning a language. One very useful technique for this is ‘clocks'.ĭraw two clock faces on a page, one for an ideal week day and one for an ideal day at the weekend. You may also find it helpful to separate chores, including driving children to activities, and ‘fun’. That will give you an idea of your current work-life balance. Try keeping a diary for a week, and set out how much time you spend on each activity, both at work and outside. What is the nature and scale of the problem?īefore you can make things better, you have to understand the problem. With almost half of people reporting that their jobs are either ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ stressful in a survey in the US, this means that the idea of a work-life balance is increasingly important to the economy.Īchieving a work-life balance can be a challenge, but these ideas should help you to make a start: 1. It is well-documented that rest and, particularly, being able to detach from work is vital for reducing stress. These are not just personal problems: time off work for mental health problems is extremely expensive for businesses. Stress and RestĪs our page on Stress explains, while some level of stress can be very productive, prolonged and high levels of stress can lead to mental health problems, including burnout and depression. This explains partly why a work-life balance is a relatively modern concept, because you truly do need all the basic needs to be met before you have time or energy, or need, to worry about aesthetics or self-actualisation. ![]() Smart phones, remote working technology and the like have meant that, even on holiday, people find it hard to ‘switch off’ and genuinely rest, and the complaint is often that people are expected to be ‘on-call’ at all times, without being allowed to have a life outside work.Īt the top of the pyramid, however, are needs which are hard to meet with work alone, and this is where lifestyle choices, and having time for leisure, become important. It has, however, taken on a new meaning with the recent technological changes that have made it possible for workers to stay in touch 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was probably first used in the UK in the late 1970s, and in the US in the mid-1980s. The phrase ‘work-life balance’ is rather more recent in origin. They were genuinely able to rest, away from work, without having to think about it or worry about what might be going on in their absence. But in those days, ‘work’ was mostly manual, and once workers left the site, they also left their work behind. In the 1800s, during and following the industrial revolution, industrialists and unions alike agreed that workers needed a day off. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
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