Failed to balance work and home? Try once again
Maintaining a perfect balance between professional and personal life is a matter of choice. I have seen many people excusing their personal time for sake of official matters. Which is not right for their family on one hand, it is hampering their productivity on the other hand. Rising challenges is one reason for increasing working hours. However, rising distraction is another. If you are engaged in multitasking, responding emails or checking and updating social profiles, naturally demand more time from you.
“Focus on the things that are important to you, and don’t do the extraneous stuff,” says Miller. “It’s a discipline that doesn’t come too naturally to most of us.”
According to a survey published in forbes.com employees waste their upto 5 hours a week for surfing non work related websites. Isn’t that massive? Indeed. You can make your family a lot happier by spending these hours, also saving your employer’s resources.
Technology contributes a lot in interfering work with personal time. You need to define boundaries that segregate your priorities. Attending and solving personal issues during office hours lingers your working time. Similarly, answering official emails and calls refrain you giving your 100% to your family. Not only to your family but yourself as well. For instance, there is no point of going to long joy ride with your headphones on for remote official call.
“If you want balance–and not everybody does–you have to force yourself to edit yourself personally and professionally,” says Jody Greenstone Miller, an author and chief executive of Business Talent Group, a supplier of high-end business talent for consulting and project-based roles.
The world should learn from countries like Sweden, that are cutting short their working hours to 6 hours (from conventional 8 hours shift). And this is all is being done to enhance the productivity of their people.
Sweden is moving towards a standard 6-hour work day
“My impression now is that it is easier to focus more intensely on the work that needs to be done and you have the stamina to do it and still have energy left when leaving the office, Linus Feldt, CEO of Stockholm-based app developer Filimundus
And, if going by the statistics, Sweden is the 7th richest country in the world in terms of GDP and living standards. So, if people of Sweden can show their maximum productivity by just working 6 hours a day, why can’t rest of the world? Instead of taking short breaks during long working hours, we must focus on accomplishing our duties on time without any distractions.
As I have already said, maintaining balance is all about matter of choice. Even then, here I would like to share a few things that might help you in making yourself happy both personal at professional front.
Exercise and Meditate
No doubt, this adds one more task in your list but believe me exercising and meditating helps in increasing concentration, draining anger and frustration. This would make you more calm and composed.
Procrastination
Stop procrastinating. This is the biggest hurdle that you would face in your life. Obviously this needs a lot of willpower to stick to your routine instead of delaying it for unimportant things. But if you learn how to overpower procrastination, this would definitely one of your greatest achievement.
Multitasking
If you have the habit of handling multiple tasks at the same time, get rid of it. If you streamline your assignments and complete them one by one, that would increase your productivity.
Diet
I must admit that I have the habit of munching while I work. This is not a really bad habit, if we keep a check on what we are eating. Eating lot of carbs during lunch makes you sleepy. Intake food that drains toxins from your body keeps you energetic and fresh.
Vacation
This is indeed my favorite part of balancing plan. I love spending some quality time with my family and sometimes friends too. So, it is advised to go either short vacations upto 3 times a year or just for a long vacation once in a year. This revives you energy and concentrate more on your job.
