23 things I've learned about work-life balance
Use it and save it for those moments when you feel like everything is falling apart.
I know you’ve been there.
Answering emails whilst having dinner with your friends.
Waking up in the middle of the night to worry about a work problem.
Pushing yourself to complete one more task before you call it a day even though your body and brain are shooting fire alarms to beg you to stop.
In this modern world of overwork, we’ve all danced along the tightrope of exhaustion.
Some of us have taken long sick leaves to recover from burnouts.
Some of us have quit our jobs in pursuit of a better work-life balance.
Some of us are still doing the dance every day, hoping not to fall.
I’m lucky enough to say that even though I still have 99 problems to solve with my career and future aspirations, finding work-life balance isn’t one of them.
That’s why I’m sharing 23 practical tips that have helped me navigate the subtle balance of doing things I love, making a living, having four different jobs and feeling zen in my body and mind (at least most of the time).
#1 Mornings, mornings, mornings. I’m a firm believer that how you start your day is conducive to how the day will become. That’s why my mornings are my most protected resource. I don’t read messages, emails or the news in bed. I keep do not disturb mode on until 8.30. In the meanwhile, I do yoga and meditation, get dressed, walk my dog, eat my breakfast and check my priorities for the day.
#2 Email blocks. I delay reading my emails until I’ve completed something, unless I know there’s something urgent I need to attend to. I don’t do email notifications on any device. I check my emails throughout the day about three times. Other times are reserved for creative or focused work.
#3 Stop working. If work gets overwhelming, the only thing that works for me is stopping completely. This means taking some time off my computer even when I don’t really have the time to do so. Calm can only be achieved through calm. So when poop hits the fan, I do my best to hit the hiking path or go for a swim.
#4 Switching it up. As a creative freelancer, I have the luxury of choosing where I work. Even though I’m a bit of a hermit and like to work from home, I need variety to feel inspired and energised. So, working at coffee shops and scheduling coffee dates with friends and collaborators in the middle of the day helps me stay in a vibrant mood. Sometimes, something smaller such as lighting a candle, using a room diffuser or choosing the kitchen instead of the office space can also help to shake things up.
#5 Not working past 7 pm. Working late at night directly impacts my sleep so it’s a no-go for me. I need several hours of downtime between work and sleep and the earlier these hours start, the better.
#6 Question every meeting. As a freelancer, meetings are no longer my worst enemy but back when I was still employed, meetings would take up a large chunk of my day and drain me both mentally and physically. So I started to be mindful about which meetings I attended, said no whenever I couldn’t find a reason to be included and challenged meetings that had no clear agenda. Sometimes, meetings can be just an email and at other times, no amount of emails will replace a good conversation. It’s a skill to learn to know the difference.
#7 Know who you are. After doing several years of therapy and other healing and self-development modalities, I’ve come to gain a fair deal of self-knowledge. I know I’m more creative when I work alone, yet I also need social stimulation to get some fresh ideas. I know I’m better at 1-2-1 conversations than in group ideation sessions. I know I can be sensitive to critique and need to pause after receiving critical feedback. I know I can shut down if I feel misunderstood and I know I have issues around being vulnerable. All of this knowledge is vital to help me find the type of work I enjoy the most and also to manage my insecurities.
#8 Yoga. Being committed to yoga as a lifestyle means I always have a space to reflect on how I’m feeling on a physical and mental level. To me, yoga isn’t about getting into headstands or going for classes at fancy studios. It’s often a 10-minute session in my lounge, doing whatever I feel like my body and mind need in that moment. It’s a reset that allows me to stay connected to the physical instead of getting lost in life's thoughts and stressors.
#9 Never skip breakfast or lunch. Having a meal by my desk is a sign of failing at life. It’s one of the key performance indicators that tells me something’s not right. There should always be time for a meal and food should never be consumed when distracted.
#10 Know when you’re working and when you’re not. Boundaries for self and for others are maybe the most important tool for anyone who has a tendency to overwork themselves. I use simple tools like Google Calendar and Trello to plan my days and know exactly what I need to do today. This means blocking hours in the calendar for a specific project or task and leaving some room in between intense activities such as coaching sessions, meetings, creative work, interviews and public speaking gigs. Those empty spaces are there for unwinding and recovery.
#11 Evaluate what’s good enough. Whenever I start a new project, I try to make sure all parties involved share an understanding of what is considered good enough. I ask questions that make the other party acknowledge their hidden agendas or secret wishes. This helps me understand what kind of metrics are used to evaluate my success. For example, if I’m working on a piece of text, I start by creating a detailed brief. If I start a new coaching relationship, I give the client extensive surveys to understand who they are and how exactly they want me to help them.
#12 Spend less time following people with similar careers. The comparison trap will forever leave you feeling unsatisfied and not enough. The more you spend time following people with similar career pursuits and businesses, the more likely you are to measure your success against theirs, copy what they’re doing and lose who you are and what makes you unique. I try to spend as little time as possible on social media and look for inspiration elsewhere than in my direct competition.
#13 In moments of overwhelm, have a complete reset. If everything feels like a bit too much and I feel unable to make decisions, that’s my que to take a break. A day off, a long weekend, a holistic healing workshop, a staycation or anything that helps me properly switch off. Nothing good will come out of working with a chaotic mind.
#14 Accept the sh*t sandwich. Every job will have its ups and downs, the fun and the boring stuff. I don’t expect perfection from the job I’m doing. Instead, I try to choose jobs where the shitty parts are somewhat tolerable and try to accept they’re always going to be there.
#15 Find teams that align with your values. One of the leading causes for burnout is value conflict. It means that if you’re doing something that’s against your values, you’re more likely to exhaust yourself. If, let’s say, your boss has a very different view on work-life balance than you and always texts you at 9 pm, you have a conflict. Or if your company processes are messy and you’re a person who thrives on organisation, you have a conflict. So, when looking for jobs and teams to join, pay attention to how they work and be honest about who you are.
#16 Accept the inevitable. We live in a world where the primary purpose of most companies is to make a profit. Even in values-driven social enterprises, this is true to some extent. Profit-seeking makes companies somewhat cold but also highly efficient. On the other hand, NGOs and public organisations are not driven by profit but they might have messy operations, slow and stiff processes and lack dynamism. And entrepreneurship will always mean wearing many hats and having too much to do. The faster you accept the realities of the game in any given modality of work, the calmer you can be about them. It’s slow and arduous to try to change the fundamental mechanisms of how an organisation works, so I’ve found it to be better to instead focus on the impact you can make within those mechanisms.
#17 Embrace the incomplete. For a long time, I tried to finish my to–do lists every day. And because I was overambitious and unrealistic about what I could finish in a day and rarely had reserved time for ad hoc curveballs, I felt like a failure every day since I never got through my list. In the aftermath of my burnout, I learned to accept shorter to-do lists and a sense of incompleteness. I created daily to-do lists instead of a big one so that if something was left undone on Monday, I’d just move it to Tuesday. I lowered my expectations about what was possible to achieve in a day and got comfortable with things getting in the way and always finishing with a slight feeling of incompleteness.
#18 Stop thinking about work, think about time outside of work. Often, when we try to achieve work-life balance, we put all our effort into fixing our work but very little effort into fixing our life. Doing 14-hour days is easy if we don’t have other engagements to attend to. I’ve found that when I shift my focus to my leisure time, I automatically become more productive during my working hours and start to reserve more time for leisurely activities. Travel and remote work have been an enormous help to me since whenever I’ve been somewhere interesting, I’ve made more time for outdoorsy activities and attended small adventures. Getting a dog has also been a good reason to take a break from the desk and I’m sure family life or an intense hobby can serve a similar purpose.
#19 Pile it up, stack and compound similar work. If you’re involved in multiple different projects, your best asset is how you manage your brain. Overwhelm is a result of feeling scattered and all over the place. Calm is a result of being in alignment with yourself and your work. I’ve become very intentional about the different types of work I do: emails, editing work, meetings, creative or deeply analytical work, admin tasks etc. All of these have different energies, and I try my best to design my days so that similar work is stacked into meaningful chunks. Then, other tasks are given a designated chunk somewhere else. An hour might be enough for five admin tasks but two hours might be a minimum for a single creative task. And the creative task might benefit from going for a walk before or after. It’s not really about the time or work itself, it’s about the type of brain activity the work requires. And anything that brings you on the right brainwave is considered a success.
# 20 Clock your hours. Many of us who leave traditional employment also want to leave behind the HR policies and processes we might have started resenting, such as clocking our hours. However, I think understanding my hours is an essential key to success. Knowing exactly how long it takes to write an article or prep for a new coaching client or develop a communications strategy not only helps me plan my hours realistically but also ensures I charge the right amount of money for the work I do. You don’t necessarily have to clock your hours forever – just long enough to gain an understanding of what a single type of work requires. Becoming aware of your hours is a long-term investment in your wellbeing.
# 21 Dare not to be busy. “Being busy” is a narrative that many of us have grown accustomed to. We’ve normalised it to the point where being not busy is considered suspicious. It’s almost rebellious to tell people you have plenty of time for fun in your life and that you’re not stressed out by work. And that’s precisely why we should be doing it. Stories create realities. The more we celebrate the moments when we’re feeling balanced and calm, the more likely we’re to cultivate those moments in the long term. I’ve tried to become open an honest about when I’m having a daytime run, or chilling by the beach. Sharing leisurly activities with clients still isn’t easy for me because I’ve always had such a high work ethic and I notice feeling self-consicous about it but that’s also precisely the reason why I try to do it. Changing the narrative of “busyness” can inspire a bigger change.
#22 Don’t expect perfection, even in work-life balance. We shouldn’t try to achieve wellbeing. Like our bank account balance, our work-life balance fluctuates. Sometimes, we have more leisure time and sometimes, we need to devote 120% of our capacity to an important work project. I’ve realised there’s no point in stressing about the yoga class I missed or the extra hours I had to do on a given day. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean we’re not doing our best. Striving for an 80% balance is good enough. It’s a skill in itself to learn to expect less from ourselves.
#23 Show a little skin. Learning to be a bit more vulnerable has been one of the most significant ways for me to shield myself from too high expectations. Learning to say “Sorry, I can’t”, “I need help”, “I’m too tired” is incredibly empowering. It also gives us permission to meet others on a level of humanity so that others can be vulnerable too. It’s not easy for me to reveal my fragility and be a bit lost sometimes, but I’ve noticed that it increases self-love and makes work relationships feel more meaningful.
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I hope you’ve found something in this post that helps you take care of yourself. If you want to share your work-life balance tricks and tips, please leave a comment below or send me an email so that we can turn this into a collective effort.
Become the hope you wish to feel in this world.
With kindness,
Aurora
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