No, work life balance is not utopian and it is not a myth. It is just plain and simple difficult to achieve. Let us begin with a caveat. You will never have the scales balanced evenly or to perfection. You will always be more focused on either work or life. That is the truth. Can you spend twelve hours at work and twelve hours with your family? That is humanly not possible. You do need to sleep and you need time for chores or to care for yourself. Even normal grooming sessions takes a while. Can you have a successful career working for just four or two hours so that you can spend a lot of time with your family and on yourself? The answer is no, unless you are already a billionaire or a millionaire nearing retirement.
Attaining work life balance is possible and you need to walk a very thin line. Here are some ways to achieve work life balance.
- Schedule your professional and personal life. Just as you would have a routine at work, have one for your personal life. Don’t just go about the chores and your responsibilities at home. Make a calendar, set up personal meetings, social gatherings, hangouts, dinners and every activity you must indulge in yourself in a personal capacity or with your spouse, partner, kids, friends and extended family. Use an organizer or planner for your personal life.
- Always know where to draw a line. Don’t commit to more than what you can deliver. That applies to both work and life. Don’t even start crossing the line because when you have overpromised or committed to too much a few times, it will become a practice and you will begin to fail and fall behind, either at work or in personal life and at times in both.
- Learn to say no. Learn to be easy on yourself. Learn to open up and learn to tell yourself that it is okay to have a tiny imbalance between work and life. You will never attain that balance if you don’t learn these.
- Sleep, rest, healthy diets and an exercise routine; you need these to maintain work life balance. If any one or more are amiss then you are staring at an imbalance or the beginning of a disaster.