6 ways you can make the most of your time to balance work and personal life.

If tomorrow is my last day on earth, my life would still be full – I have friends, family, and a rich personal life I cultivated through the years. 

I had no personal life a few years back, though.

My family and friends were important to me, but I put them on the backburner, putting my career and goals ahead of them. I was an overachiever. I liked moving towards my goals. Through the years, it became easy to be this solo warrior. I drove myself crazy working on different projects 24/7, every day for years. The compounding stress from the never-ending workday damaged my personal life. Giving priority only to my work life hurt my relationships, health, and overall happiness. Endless work had slowly but surely crushed the spirit of those close to me. 

I would wake up every morning and spend the day walking towards my career goals like the day before and the day before.

I did this until life interrupted my routine with a wakeup call…

One evening, on the way to my home, I doubled over in pain, a pressure that went from my chest to my back and up my neck. I thought, “I’m having a heart attack.” I considered alerting someone but decided to take an 81 milligram aspirin. For months after, I felt the same ongoing physical symptoms: pain in my chest, a suffocating pressure, and an inability to take deep breaths. I spoke to a doctor who suggested to take a break from my never-ending work schedule.

I took his advice to heart and my life has never been the same.  

Work-life balance can seem like an impossible feat. How do you allow yourself sufficient time to work on a job you love – whatever it may be – while also allowing space for relaxation and connection with those you love? 

Some people believe having a full-time job leaves no space for many other things.
But it’s possible to “have it all” – a thriving relationship, great sleep, rest, and career success. It’s possible to have a more than full-time job and have a full personal life. 

It’s just a matter of where that time goes. 

Work-life balance means something different to every individual. But these 6 ways have helped me to balance my work life with my personal life. I hope they help you as well.

1. Think 168 hours, not 24

Efficiency only carries us so far. Even if you’re the most productive person in the world, you have a limit to the energy you can spend and a limit on your output. Focusing entirely on efficiency and trying to do everything in one day is the wrong approach. 

I don’t want to snuggle with my boyfriend or eat dinner in my parent’s home or drink red wine with my close friend just on Sundays. But if I think of my work productivity in terms of 24 hours, maybe I will have Sundays to do these things. I may not even have Sundays if I am obsessed on working every 24 hours that constitute the 7 days of every week.

Why force yourself to adhere to a 24-hour schedule?

We can avoid “the 24-hour trap”. When it comes to time, we often think ‘balance’ requires fitting all of our priorities into 24 hours. We want to fit those priorities into each of the 24 hours that constitute each day.

A more realistic approach might be to look at the whole picture. There are 168 hours in a week. That means if you’re working 40 hours a week and sleeping an average of eight hours a night, you still have 72 hours for other important things like your personal life. I have a full-time job teaching online classes and writing. But I work late a few nights – until 10 or 11 p.m. – and spend quality time with my partner on other days. 

Any given 24 hours might not be balanced, but the 168-hour week as a whole can be. 

If you overwork yourself on Monday and Tuesday, make a conscious decision to block time on Wednesday to simply relax or have lunch with dear friends. Put it in your calendar if you need to. The goal isn’t necessarily for every day to look the same; it is for things to balance out on the whole. 

2. Take real breaks

Over the past 3 years, I’ve come to identify myself strongly with my blog, Banchi Inspirations. It’s inevitable when you surrender yourself to a creation and commit to a strong yet evolving vision of what it can be. But I remind myself that I’m so much more than what I do and that I need real breaks. 

You don’t have to catch the flu or have an accident to take real breaks. 

Even when we’re busy, we make time for the crucial things in life. We eat. We go to the bathroom. We sleep. And yet, one of our most crucial need – rest – is often the first thing we abandon when our calendars fill up. We consider real breaks as something we would take when we get enough money or when our startup takes off or when our body forces us to take a real break. 

But a real break is not a luxury.

Breaks are a great opportunity to nurture yourself and to shape your work culture. By taking a real break, I don’t mean taking a break from work and scrolling through Facebook or checking your stocks or responding to emails. These things interrupt your off time and inject an undercurrent of stress in your system. So don’t text when you’re snuggling with your loved one and don’t send work emails while you’re hanging out with family. 

By taking a real break, I mean building unclaimed time into your life. Putting your foot down and forgetting about work and just relaxing. I use a small weekly calendar (it provides a visual signal that a day is getting too full. When I find myself scribbling items in the margins, that’s a sign I need to take a real break).

Make quality time true quality time. 

3. Plan ahead for non-negotiable things

Most people don’t think about Monday until they’re in it. 

But I spend 10 to 15 minutes each day after work – including Sunday evening – thinking about the next day. I plot out tasks I’m going to do on the next day. But more important than my task list for the next day, I write a list of personal things I want to do. Like calling my grandmother or eating lunch with a co-worker who’s grieving her mother’s loss or surprising my boyfriend by preparing his favorite simple dinner dish. 

When I plan ahead for these important things, I’m giving them importance. 

If you don’t identify things that are non-negotiable in advance, you may find them slipping, little by little, while you put yourself in different directions, because you never made a commitment to not let that happen.

4. Multitask – the right way

By multitasking I don’t mean to compromise the quality of your work by doing something else at the same time. I’m a writer and a teacher. When I do my work, my entire focus is on the task at hand. 

But we can multitask on things that use different parts of our brain. 

For example, while I am folding laundry or cleaning my kitchen, I put my phone on a speaker mode and catch up with a friend. My partner and I talk about our day while we prepare our dinner. I walk with a business partner and discuss ideas on the walk. 

If you learn to multitask effectively, you can balance your work and personal life.

5. Limit time-wasting activities and people

Balancing work and personal life means saying no.  

A few weeks ago, a friend I knew in college invited me for an evening Zoom birthday party. I said no. I told my friend my evenings are reserved for my family only. 

It is difficult to say ‘no’ to people you know. But I’ve learned I can’t have everything. You can have it all, but each person needs to define their personal ‘all’ because you can’t have everything. For me, having it ‘all’ means saying ‘no’ so I could have a successful career during the day and cherish family time in the evening. I know my time is limited, and I reduce my obligations to the core of what I want to accomplish.

What about you?

Identify what’s most important in your life. Make sure it truly reflects your priorities, not someone else’s. If you find your time being gobbled up by less constructive people, find ways to diplomatically limit these interactions. Drinks with the work gang the night before a busy, important day? Bow out and spend the night with your partner. Focus on the people and activities that reward you the most. Draw firm boundaries so you can devote quality time to these important people and activities. 

6. Take advantage of unexpected moments

Sometimes we finish a day’s work we thought would take a whole day at noon. Sometimes the project we have been doing for weeks gets done ahead of schedule. 

This is when we should use the unexpected moment we have for a good use. Instead of wasting this time with mindless web scrolling, we can use it effectively. Every time an unexpected moment barges in my life, I call my boyfriend and ask, “Let’s go to our favorite park and spend quality time together.” And sometimes I visit a hair salon for a scalp and foot massage without an appointment. 

It’s always good to have ideas on hand for extra time that might appear throughout your day if you finish your day work or your latest project early. 

Takeaway:

There’s nothing wrong with working hard to get ahead, but don’t forget the worth of people that really matter most. It’s important that we are able to work on balancing work and personal life. This may seem like a daunting task, but it’s possible if you take the time and care to make it a priority. 

“I’ve learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life.”  – Maya Angelou