Your Work-Life Balance starts with You!
Hello Reader! Hope you had a really great week, and by great week, I mean, your work tasks went well, you landed up home on time to have dinner with your family, did some hobby that made your mind happy and had a good night's sleep to start the next day with even more energy. If not, then you have probably started walking on the path that leads to an imbalance in the so called 'Work-Life Balance' that the Corporates have glorified so much!
Firstly, having a solid work-life balance depends on yourself first rather than the company culture which demands working extra at times. If you set your priorities and boundaries right, from the beginning, then seldom your superior(s) will ask you to work extra and lay-off work on you. So the logic to this is: once you portray yourself as someone who is 'okay' about staying extra at work and finishing off the tasks, that is when the expectations build up, which culminates to a regular thing. So when the 'pull an extra hour' starts to become repetitive and you are irked about it, that's when you feel like the company is against its 'Work-Life Balance' practices and the dislike towards the company builds up which leads to lesser motivation to work, from your end, which is quite a stress.
Secondly, people need to understand that there is nothing wrong in setting your limit of time frame. Everyone needs that time off, away from office, to enjoy 'life', be it out with friends or having a peaceful dinner at home, your friends and family need to see more of you rather than the worn-out from the day's work's distressed formals and a 'damn, this work is killing me' look on your face'. For us, the fresher's at work, we may feel the urge to 'prove' ourselves at work,at every step, to reach the set ambition, but it is after years that we realize how that giving 'extra' turned out to be. So, it only sounds better to do what's right for you, from the beginning. Life doesn't just happen on weekends!
Somehow, it is for this reason why 'job' is getting tagged as dreadful in our minds day by day and hence that 'start-up' thing has become the buzz-word, just because the mind-set is: to be the boss, live 'life' and earn quick money. Now, how the start-ups work, that's another question, but I can be sure about one thing a start-up, rather is a 24 x 7 job, because the capitalist's money is at stake! Something to think about right?
While we are at it, 'cutting off' from any work related tasks is also very important when it comes to putting the right work-life balance practices in place. Avoid yourself, while away from work, to check mails, revert to them, attend conference calls even in the post-dinner hours, taking up tasks which require you to stay up till the wee hours of the night. These little habits also determine your contribution towards maintaining a balance.
And of-course, as the generation before us taught us, pre-planning is the key. Time Management, as big as the word is, the wonders of it are truly fruitful. Effectively managing your daily work-hours, lunch-hour, coffee-breaks, de-cluttering mails through various tech-apps, keeping desks clean, these habits, which may sound un-important to you even while reading them, I'm sure that they will add up to your day's productivity and you won't have to pull that extra hour ahead by the end of the day!
I agree, you may be putting in those extra efforts to finish off the targets and feel secure with what what that job offers, but at the same time, it is also the company's look-out to strike the real balance, and if you are still stuck in a company which doesn't understand these facts, then you might re-think at what cost you are finishing off those targets for (in the long-run)!
Studies suggest that about 11% of the time's employees leave jobs due to poor Work-Life Balance. Well, now with this post, I hope you have some thinking to do and work towards maintaining that balance from your end. Hope this post lead to some realization. Share and Comment down below if you have views for or against this post, I'd be glad to get better insights over the same.
Thank you all for reading my posts, will keep posting about various aspects every weekend.
Much Love, Gratitude and Positivity.
- Binal R. Chitroda
(#TheHRConnect)