Health and Safety
Fueling your work-life flow: We often bring stress on ourselves by taking on too many commitments
By the Employee Assistance Program
When your life is in balance between home and work, you feel emotionally and physically healthy, able to take things in stride, and positive about the future. However, many people struggle to balance their full-time jobs and personal responsibilities.
The list of demands on our time can seem endless. We’ve all heard the “I don’t have time” excuse before, and it can certainly feel that way when we’ve over-committed or over-scheduled ourselves.
The fact is, we all have the same amount of time each day, and we each make the decision on how we’re going to spend it.
Sometimes not maintaining appropriate work-life boundaries creates overwhelm. Do you check work emails at night or weekends when it’s not necessary to do so? If you work remotely, do you set regular work hours and “unplug” when the workday is over?
Here are some tips to achieve better work-life flow and make the best use of your time:
Prioritize your assignments and activities. Be sure to identify your key assignments and projects on a daily basis and schedule around them first.
Recognize your most productive times and do your most important and challenging tasks then. We have different levels of energy and creativity at different times of the day. Take advantage of your most productive periods.
Minimize distractions. Frequent interruptions eat up productive time and can negatively impact the quality of your work. If possible, check your emails and texts only at certain times, and avoid multi-tasking.
Get rid of clutter. Clutter can sap your time and energy, especially if you find yourself spending time every day looking for things you need. Straighten up your desk/workspace daily. The same goes for online clutter; delete what you don’t need and move on.
Allow some flexibility in your schedule for activities you enjoy and for the unexpected things that always pop up in life. Taking physical and mental breaks will actually help you be more productive and satisfied with your work.
We often bring stress on ourselves by taking on too many commitments and not asking for help, even if we feel overburdened. Are there areas in your work or personal life where you can delegate tasks? Are there other ways you can scale back and not take on as much?
Sometimes we’re driven by a need for perfectionism and we’re reluctant to hand over responsibilities, even when it would provide us much-needed relief.