Work life balance is the dream of almost all workers. Unfortunately, some workers think that this is just wishful thinking. This is because competition in the world of work is getting tighter with the workload always increasing every day.
As a result, many workers are susceptible to disease due to continuous work. In fact, some of them barely have free time for themselves or their families.
Of course, you don't want that to happen, right? Therefore, let's look at the factors that cause this, the benefits and how to achieve work life balance for workers below.
1. What is Work Life Balance
Work life balance is a balance between work and personal life. This term can also be interpreted as someone who can manage time and energy in a balanced way for work, personal life, family and recreation.
Reporting from Forbes, millennials define work life balance as a condition where someone can fulfill their lifestyle from the work they do.
If a worker does not implement work life balance, he will experience stress and even burnout. As a result, physical and mental health are at stake, causing various diseases to emerge, such as hypertension, depression, insomnia, anxiety disorders, digestive problems, heart disease and chronic pain.
Therefore, it is important for you to adopt a balanced lifestyle between work and personal life.
2. Factors That Influence Work Life Balance
There are several factors that can influence work life balance, namely:
2.1 Personality
Personality characteristics have an influence on the work environment and outside work. Usually, someone who has had a good life since childhood tends to be able to achieve work-life balance easily.
2.2 Family
Family factors are also an aspect that determines whether there is conflict between work and personal life.
For example, role conflict and role ambiguity in the family can affect work life balance.
2.3 Attitude
A person's attitude in evaluating various aspects of social life can also be a factor that influences work life balance. Each individual has different attitudes depending on their respective characteristics.
2.4 Employment
Job characteristics including work patterns, workload and the time you spend working can trigger conflict. Be it conflicts in the scope of work or conflicts in personal life.
3. Benefits of Work Life Balance for Workers
Work life balance can make you not only live to work, work and work. However, you can be more productive by doing things you like outside of work itself.
Currently, many Indonesian workers are increasingly realizing that work life balance is very important for their lives. Because, someone who has a balanced lifestyle between work and personal life looks happier in carrying out daily activities.
Here are several benefits you will get when implementing work life balance, namely:
3.1 Life Becomes Healthier Physically and Mentally
The first benefit of work life balance is that it allows you to live a healthier life, both physically and mentally. Because, you still have time outside of work for various activities, such as watching films, exercising, playing games and quality time with your family.
So, you can be happier living your daily life without having to stress about just thinking about work.
3.2 Social Relations Get Better
With work life balance, you have enough time to gather with the people closest to you. Starting from friends, family, relatives to lovers. Of course, meeting other people frequently will improve social relationships for the better. So, life feels happy, healthy and far from all negative thoughts.
3.3 Can Reduce Stress and Burnout
Stress is a health problem that is often experienced by workers. If left unchecked, you will experience continuous burnout, aka fatigue. Of course, this problem will reduce work productivity levels.
However, stress and burnout can be overcome by implementing a balanced work and personal life. So, you don't work long hours, so you still have time to do fun things to reduce stress.
3.4 Work Productivity Increases
Implementing work life balance can actually increase work productivity. The thing is, your body is healthy and happy, so you can work focused according to the specified time.
In fact, balancing work and personal life makes you more creative and able to show good work performance. That way, your duties and responsibilities at work can be fulfilled optimally with satisfactory results.
3.5 Avoid Disease
As you already know, work life balance will increase a person's happiness in life.
When you live a happy life, you can think more positively and optimistically which will increase your immunity to protect your body from disease attacks.
Not only diseases that eat away at the body, you can also avoid various kinds of mental illnesses. The reason is, someone who is able to work sufficiently can be more dedicated, less stressed while working and able to meet personal needs.
3.6 Get Enough Sleep
Having balanced time between work and personal life makes you have good quality sleep. An adequate sleep pattern for 8 hours will make the body fresher and full of energy when you wake up in the morning.
Work life balance allows a person to get enough sleep, without having to think about work. You only need to think about work problems when you are in the office. After returning home, you just focus on yourself, without feeling haunted by various tasks from work.
3.7 Can Perform Other Activities
Being able to achieve work life balance means you still have the energy, time and finances to carry out other activities.
For example, join a hobby community that you like, such as a book club, cycling, drawing, playing music and others. In fact, you can still go for walks, take part in exciting events and gather with close friends.
Of course, all the activities you do will not be disturbed by various work matters. So, your heart will definitely feel happy without being stressed, right?
3.8 Increase Creativity
In order to be able to express creative ideas, you must be free from all kinds of problems that always surround your mind. That's why, you must be able to maintain a work-life balance. So, the quality of your work gets better and improves over time.
4. How to Achieve Work Life Balance
As long as you know how to start, achieving work life balance is not impossible.
Here are several ways you can achieve work life balance, namely:
4.1 Resetting Working Hours
To achieve balance between work and personal life, you must be able to divide your time between both. Start writing down the work and activities you will do in your to-do list every day, then rearrange your working hours. Make sure you don't often work overtime so you can do other things outside of work.
Apart from making a daily to-do list, also do time blocking so you can do all the work without having to multitask. So, do the work one by one to get optimal results.
4.2 Smart and Productive Work
Working smart and productively can help you achieve work-life balance. Basically, working smart will find out what strengths and weaknesses you have.
Not only that, make sure you are able to build a network around you to achieve your work goals as quickly and efficiently as possible. That way, you can be more productive and improve your personal life which is often neglected.
4.3 Set Job Priorities
So that work can be completed well, try to prioritize work using the Eisenshower Matrix.
The Eisenshower Matrix divides work priorities into four categories, namely:
- Important - urgent work: work that must be done and completed as soon as possible today.
- Important - non-urgent work: work that can still be scheduled and done after important - urgent work is completed.
- Unimportant - urgent work: if there is work that is urgent, but not very important to you, it is best to delegate it to another colleague.
- Non-important work - not urgent: You can remove this type of work from your work priority list and not have to do it.
By prioritizing work, you will know which work must be completed first so that time and energy are not wasted.
4.4 Make Time for Yourself and Your Family
The next way to achieve work-life balance is to take time for yourself and your family after coming home from work. However, if after work you are too tired to do heavy activities, you can spend the time watching films, reading books, meditating or drinking tea.
Also spend time meeting loved ones, such as family and friends on weekends. By spending time with loved ones, you won't feel lonely and won't think too much about work problems all the time. There are times when you have to forget for a moment about problems at work and focus on your own happiness.
4.5 Communication If You Need Help
When you work for too long with a workload that piles up, you are usually prone to stress and burnout. All the work in your office or workplace does not all have to be done alone.
If you feel you can't do it, you can ask your closest co-worker for help. Of course, the colleagues in question are colleagues who work in the same field or division.
4.6 Don't Take Work Home
Complete work at the office and avoid bringing it home. The work that is your assignment should only be completed in the office. Don't get into the habit of bringing work home or outside working hours because this will make your body tired quickly and trigger stress.
If you work WFA or WFH, only open the laptop during working hours. So, after work hours are over, close the laptop and use the remaining free time to relax or do a hobby that you like.
Remember, make sure you use your work time for work and use your leisure time to relax without thinking about work at all.
4.7 Avoid Distractions While Working
Apart from rearranging working hours and prioritizing work, you also need to avoid distractions or things that can interfere with focus. If you can't focus on the work you are doing, then the task will take a long time to complete and will require additional time, aka overtime.
You definitely don't want to work overtime for too long and spend time that should be used for relaxing, right?
So, so you can focus on work, try using the Pomodoro technique which will make you more focused using time intervals.
For example, focus only on working for 25 minutes, then rest 5 minutes and start again for 4 rounds. If after 4 rounds the work is not finished, you can take a longer break, namely around 15-20 minutes. Next, repeat working for 25 minutes and resting 5 minutes for 4 more rounds.
The time interval used does not need to follow the example above. Just adjust it to your work rhythm so you can provide maximum results.
4.8 Reject Less Important Work
If additional work suddenly appears, for example before work hours or on a Friday even though the following day is the weekend, you can refuse the work, especially if it feels less important.
The additional work that you can accept is only important and urgent work. Moreover, if there is still a lot of main work that has not been completed, it is perfectly acceptable to refuse the work.
However, make sure you politely refuse with a clear reason. For example, “Yes, but for now my main work is not finished. So, I can work on it later. If it has to be finished today, maybe you can offer it to other colleagues first, okay?"
4.9 Reducing Perfectionist Attitudes
Reducing perfectionist attitudes can also be a way to create a balanced work and personal life. Actually, being a perfectionist is not wrong. The thing is, this characteristic will make the quality of work better.
However, if you continue to do it, usually this trait will interfere with your personal life. You more easily lose time for yourself and your family because you are too focused on work.
4.10 Tidy Up The Work Desk
Cleanliness in the workplace can affect the work-life balance that workers have. A clean and tidy work environment will improve the mood and well-being of employees.
Cleanliness can also increase morale and encourage work motivation, so that you don't get tired easily while working.
So, start by tidying up your work desk first so you can work comfortably.
4.11 Sports
The final way to achieve work life balance is to diligently exercise regularly. Exercise is often the first thing to be neglected, especially when you are busy. In fact, not only eating and drinking, exercise is also important for the body to stay physically and mentally healthy.
Apart from making the body healthy, exercise is quite an effective stress reliever. This activity is able to pump endorphins into the body well. In fact, exercise can make your mood happier and eliminate boredom.
So, in between busy work hours, take advantage of your free time to exercise a maximum of 30 minutes every day.
That is information about how to achieve work life balance that you can follow. Once you are able to apply it to your life, you will definitely be able to feel the difference. By maintaining a balance between work and personal time, life becomes happier, more valuable and avoids feelings of stress, boredom and burnout.
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