What Is a Work-Life Balance?
‘Work-life balance’ is a term we’ve probably all encountered, but what does it mean? For many of us, it can be a challenge to find a balance between the time we spend working, maintaining our health, and nurturing our personal relationships. A work-life balance promotes a state of equilibrium between these different parts of life. For some people, this might mean that at 5pm, regardless of what they are doing at work, they close their computer and finish for the day, using the evening to focus on personal pursuits. For others, it may involve a flexible work schedule that allows them to participate in personal activities that would normally not fit around a standard working day. Whatever your work-life balance looks like, maintaining it will help improve your sense of well-being, increase your productivity and creativity, and reduce your stress levels and risk of burnout.
Tips for Creating and Maintaining a Work-Life Balance
Prioritise What’s Important to You
Whether they’re daily activities or more periodic, note down all of your priorities outside of work and domestic chores. These could be hobbies, people you enjoy spending time with, fitness activities, and so on. Once you have your list, think about ways you can manage your time at work to ensure you are able to participate in these activities. This could mean starting work earlier some days, so you can leave in time to take part in an evening activity, or maybe it means planning a day of annual leave once a month so you can enjoy a regular long weekend to pursue leisure activities, rather than spreading out your holidays far apart. Knowing your priorities and having a plan in place to make them happen will help you find a better work-life balance because you’ll be building personal motivation into your professional role.
Listen to Your Body, Don’t Neglect It
When we’re busy, it’s easy to neglect our health, both mental and physical. Often we don’t realise the toll this can take until we reach breaking point and tumble into burnout territory. Making time for mental and physical self-care will have a compounding effect, with the nourishment of one element more often than not also helping the other, promoting a good work-life balance. Central Park has a number of facilities that can help you achieve this, whether it’s a simple walk in our beautifully landscaped inner-city parklands, a more intense workout with one of the qualified trainers at our state-of-the-art fitness centre, or cooling off after a ride or jog in our luxurious end-of-trip facilities. Once you’ve worked out which activities best support your body and mind, commit them to your routine. Don’t let being ‘too busy’ stop you – it’s at these times that our wellbeing is the most important and staying in good health is the best way to get through them.
Set Work Boundaries
Where possible, set fixed working hours. This gives you a clear picture of when work starts and ends, helping you plan personal activities. This is particularly important when working from home, where it’s much easier for work and personal activities to blend together. There are a number of tools you can use to help switch off and unplug at the end of the day. For example, if you are concerned about responding to emails received outside of work hours, instead of replying to them during your personal time, set an alert that lets the sender know your work hours so they’re aware of when to expect your response. You can always include emergency contact details in this message for things that really can’t wait. By the same token, it’s not the end of the world if you decide to work additional hours every now and then, just make sure you’re setting boundaries most of the time and making up for any downtime lost to extra work once the busy period ends.
At Central Park, we prioritise your work-life balance. We have a number of upcoming events to help you relax and unwind outside of work, including a number of workshops and activities to celebrate Mindfulness in May. Find out more at our News and Events page.
