How to Improve Your Work-Life Balance

We all know how hard it can be to manage the balance of work and life to ensure you’re happy and healthy. Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day for you to feel like you have a healthy balance, but don’t worry, we’ve put together some tips and tricks to help you have a healthy work-life balance.

It’s pretty easy to prioritise work over anything else, it’s what most of us do for five days a week, however, a mental health foundation survey found that ‘the more hours you spend at work, the more hours outside of work you are likely to spend thinking or worrying about it’, which can have a detrimental effect on a lot of people’s mental health, as a lot of people are rarely switching off from work.

With people prioritising work over their personal life, mental health and well-being, it can become pretty hard to get out of that routine. However we’ve come up with some tips to help you get out of that slump and fall into a new groove which will be better for your mental and physical health, and perhaps even give you a new spark.

Quick Tips:

• Exercise – Regular exercise is great for both your physical and mental health. Exercising can reduce anxiety, depression and negative moods. It can also help improve self-esteem and cognitive function.
• Prioritising Sleep – Having the right amount of sleep at night is important and has a huge impact on how you feel physically and emotionally. Without the right amount of sleep, we’re more prone to stress, our brain function reduces and mood swings are more likely.
• Having a healthy diet – Eating poorly can be a huge contributor to not feeling great mentally and physically. A lot of us may feel like we only have time for the grab-and-go foods, however it’s important to make a conscious effort to plan your meals well and buy more nutritious food. We advise planning the meals you want in your week and doing a weekly shop, so that you don’t have to rely as much on grab-and-go food and can benefit instead from a more healthy balanced diet.
• Drinking plenty – Drinking regularly is important to ensure you are hydrated. Once you begin to drink plenty, you’ll notice improvements physically as well as feeling less anxious.
• Journaling – Journaling is a great way to take time to reflect on your day to day life as well as a great motivator to fill it with exciting events and activities. It’s also healthy to write down your feelings and emotions to have a place of release from your daily stresses.
• Schedule ‘Me Time’ – Having ‘me time’ is essential to having a good mental health, you can take time for what you love and regenerate at the same time. You don’t need to have all of your ‘me time’ at once, you can spend each day doing small bits of things you love to ensure for a better and healthier mind.
• Get outdoors – The outdoors is great for revitalising and re-energising. Taking a walk every evening is great for your mental and physical health as well as giving you a change of scenery and some much needed fresh air.

Handling your Workload

When at work it can seem pretty difficult for you to say no to that ever-growing workload, however, you need to take responsibility for your work-life balance as the only person who is going to change it is you. When you’re at work you need to prioritise your workload and learn to say no to overloading workloads.

Learning how to ‘work smart, not long’ is a great motto to have in mind when it comes to prioritising your workload. This motto helps you to allocate certain amounts of time per task making you work to a ‘timetable’ so that you don’t get distracted or work on menial tasks that take up too much time.

Ensure you take advantage of your breaks. If you have half an hour or an hour for lunch, make sure you take your break and try to get out of the office for a small walk. This can help you regenerate and refresh your mind before going back to work. Ensuring you eat well on your break is also important. Make sure you have a balance of both healthy food and some tasty treats that will keep you going, as well as regular hydration to stop you from losing energy.

For a lot of us who have had to work from home due to the Pandemic and may still be working from home, make sure you separate your work life from your home life. This means working in a different room to where you would usually relax. Once you finish work for the day, you can close the door and not have to think about returning to that room again until you’re back to work.

Taking Time for yourself

Taking time for yourself is something that a lot of people tend to neglect. This is mainly because people think that they don’t need that time for themselves and tend to then burn out from overworking themselves both at work as well as socially.

We would recommend taking as little as an hour for yourself every day or even an evening a week to give yourself time to do something you enjoy. Whether you want to exercise, get outdoors, watch TV, read a book or play a video game, this time is crucial to ensuring you regenerate and have time to do something you enjoy.

We know how hard this can be especially when you finish work, have to drive home, cook yourself or your family tea, clean up after yourself and prepare for the next day of work. However, it is achievable to give yourself some time throughout your week to do what you enjoy.

Social Interactions

It can be pretty hard to maintain a good social life if you feel like your work-life balance is not that great. Prioritising time for yourself, work and a social life can seem pretty overwhelming, however, it is increasingly important to maintain good relationships with your friends.

Whilst you don’t need to talk to your friends everyday, it’s important to ensure that you have some allocated time where you’ll get to spend time with them. Organising game nights whether that be online or in person is a great way to spend time with your friends as it allows you to get your social interaction as well as have some healthy competition which increases endorphins.

Planning a regular meet up with your friends is also a great way of managing your work-life balance. A lot of people tend to imitate TV shows such as Come Dine with Me, and The Great British Bake Off which is something you can do with your friends on a monthly basis to ensure that you get to see each other regularly.

We hope that this blog will help you find your balance between work and life and if you have any tips and tricks, share them with us on our social media!