Balancing Work and Personal Life

So many people say that there just aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done that they want to do. Boy, that is something that we all deal with, but then when you sit back and look at what you get done each day, there is time that you can set aside to do something else.

The something else I am talking about is making sure that you have some time to yourself and your family. For a lot of us that work from home, it is easy to keep working long after a normal workday would have ended. What is important is making sure that you stop working at a specific time most nights to ensure you have some of that personal time. Sure, emergencies are different as they may mean not stopping at a specific time.

One way to ensure that you make time for yourself, and your family, is to book the time on your calendar. It may sound a little odd, but being able to have a notification pop up on your computer or mobile device will help remind you that it is time to wrap up work for the day. Having the time also booked on your calendar means that you won’t easily give that time away for something else. Now that so many of us work from home, it’s easy to give that bit of extra time to work, forgetting that sure we don’t have the commute to deal with, but that commute time was normally time to yourself.

For some families, making rules about using communication devices during meals might also help make sure that everyone is present during the meal. Here are some ideas:

1. Have everyone put their device in one common spot, and it cannot be retrieved until after the meal is over.
2. Any phone calls or emails are to be ignored during the meal unless it is an emergency. If you run your own business or are a senior executive, a quick glance at the device is ok to determine the level of importance.
3. Devices cannot be used to search something during a meal, as that leads to not being present during the meal.

Yes, balancing work and personal life can be a challenge, but we all must remember that we need the personal life to be happy. When work starts taking over all the hours in a day it is time to sit back and make sure that time for family, and you are scheduled on the calendar just like other meetings. The other thing we need to think about is making sure that on weekends that work isn’t done, as that is time for family.

It is now time for me to walk away from my computer and spend some time with my partner. Yes, we still make sure that we book time for ourselves and time for us on our calendar. Balancing a business and personal time can be a challenge but we can all do it with a little bit of an effort.

Working from home, is it really that bad?

I can answer that question very quickly for me, and I would say no, it isn’t bad working from home.  With our business, we work most of the time remotely, so working from home is something that we usually do. 

What is interesting about this time when everyone is working at home is understanding that we can’t go out to a coffee shop or another place for a break.  For us, a coffee shop for a treat when we wanted to have a break from sitting at home and doing the things that we had to do.  We would take our computers or paper with us and do the things that we needed to do. The routine of getting up at the same time and trying to get to our desk has remained the same currently.  I am not sure how things are going to change if this self-isolation/stay at home continues for quite a while.

For people that haven’t worked from home, I think this would be a challenging time.  It does mean that you are juggling a few extra things while also trying to get work done.  If you have children, it would be more of a challenge to work remotely as you also need to keep them entertained as they aren’t seeing their friends currently. 

Here are some points that I see can be both a benefit and a disadvantage of working from home:

1)     No co-workers wanting to talk about non-work related things.  This is offset by the family being around and wanting to talk when you are trying to work.

2)     Commute time doesn’t exist.  It can be a nice advantage not having to go to the office, but it means that work is always close by, and you don’t get that time to yourself on your commute.

3)     I can get more things done at home.  This is something that I can see could happen if you don’t have children, or you can close a door for a bit of time to get work done.  Being able to get the things done quickly is excellent as you don’t have the usual distractions of everyone around you when you are in the office.

4)     Meals can be easier to prepare.  Lunch is something that becomes easier to make when you are at home, but you also need the discipline of getting back to work after you have taken the time to have lunch.

5)     Distractions can get frustrating.  When you are in the office, you can forget about the things that need to be done around the house.  When you are working from home, you can see the items you want to get done, and it can be difficult.

6)     Quality family time.  This is something that can be nice because you don’t have the extra commute time to get too and from the office.  It does mean that the commute time can either be spent getting tasks done around the house, or you can spend that time with family and do the jobs when you would typically do them.

Working from home can be difficult, depending on your job.  There are going to be jobs that cannot be done at home, so there is no choice but to go into the office. Working remotely isn’t going to work for everyone, even if you have the opportunity.  Working remotely can be a challenge during this time when we can’t go out and see people for a break, but at least we know that we should get back to our regular routine at some point.  Until then, I am going to figure out ways to get things done well, also making sure that I can take care of myself.

Balance of work and home

Now a days a lot of us deal with the various pressures of work and home life and the balance between the two of them. For me it is a challenge because home is where quite a bit of my work is actually done so that sometimes makes the balancing of the too a little harder.

What can be a challenge when having an office at home is making sure that you find the time to walk away from that environment and remember that there are other things to do. Of course, the home office is where all the bills are paid for both work and home and even the email is mostly done in that area as well. What I have found works is normally around dinner time I will turn off the computer saying that the rest of the evening is going to be away from it and I will do other things. Now yes, I may walk away from the computer but my mobile device is always close by so that I can even deal with emails away from the computer. I just find that being able to walk away from the computer helps me make sure I have a balance.

There are times when the pressure of work does impact home and vice verse. There are the appointments that have to be done during the day that impact what I can do for work so that is one of the things. Another thing that impacts home life is when there is something that needs to get done and am working against a deadline. The deadline may mean that I work some evenings trying to focus on the task as I don't normally get as many business emails after work hours. The other impact to the home life is some meetings have to be held in the evenings so that everyone can attend especially for one client that I work with. This is partly because of dealing with the various time zones in Canada.

Making sure that you can try and balance both work and home is something that can be difficult. I know that for us the weekends are when we try to do quite a bit of the home stuff but there are times weekends are for work. If this is the case we are fortunate that we can actually sometimes take some time during the week to get the home stuff done as well.

Just make sure that you do take the time for yourself no matter how you do it. In the world today it is harder to totally walk away from work but you have to try. We have actually found a method that works for us and in some ways helps us work better. When we are feeling that stressed and overwhelmed feeling instead of getting more stressed we will go to the gym for an hour and workout. The gym is a great place to actually put a lot of the things you are dealing with in the back of your mind and let them sit there for a while. Quite a few times after getting back from the gym that task that was a challenge before is a lot easier as the solution seems to come a lot quicker.

So whatever you do remember that there should be a balance between work and home. Give yourself a little bit of time to ensure you are being you and not just the work person.