People often become consumed with professional activities – making the presentation, finishing the programming, and preparing for the meeting. They get so involved with the everyday demands of their professions that their personal lives suffer. Many of these people start to think they need to balance their work responsibilities with the demands of their private lives.
Luckily, there's a simple technique to help you balance the demands of the various aspects of your life. The technique has three tasks:
- identify your current responsibilities by listing and analyzing the demands made on you both at work and at home – Before you can achieve a healthy balance, you need to list all the demands from your family, home, and social life, as well as all the work responsibilities you have to carry out. Identify all your roles, the demands of those roles, and the time you need to meet those demands. Remember to factor in some time for yourself!
- compare the work and home demands to find out if any are incompatible – After the two areas of demands in your life are written out, you can analyze your current roles to figure out if they work together or not. Figure out which of the work demands are compatible and incompatible with the home demands. Of course, part of examining incompatibilities is to add up all the time estimates and decide if the whole list can actually fit into the time you have available.
- find solutions to prioritize demands and resolve any conflicts – If you feel your life getting out of balance, take some time to consider what's most important to you. Unimportant tasks often get done simply because they're right in front of you, demanding your time and attention. Prioritizing the demands on your time will help you recognize what's truly important to you and what's just sucking away your time, energy, and attention. Having priorities helps you set clear personal and professional goals and streamline your life to include only what is important in helping you reach those goals.
Demands and conflicts
After you've compared the demands on your time with your available energy and resources, it's time to find solutions to any incompatibilities. Be as imaginative as you can. Review the routine tasks you do daily, and ask "What if they weren't done at all?" Try to let go of perfectionist tendencies about how things should be, and think of splitting up the demands so they're more manageable.
- At home, you could consider asking for help with the children from an extended family member, carpooling for yourself or your kids, paying for help from a babysitter or nanny, or hiring a house cleaner. Work out what you could delegate, how much it might cost to do so, and how much time to allow for things you want to do yourself.
- At work, search for ways to eliminate time stealers by using technology, decluttering your office, and saying "no" to requests that don't fit in with your overall goals. Set reasonable deadlines for projects, and consider asking your boss for flexibility with your work schedule.
Investigate any options your company may already offer. Some companies have existing work/life balance programs:
- Childcare is the most prevalent work/life program, ranging from onsite day care and preschools, and before- and after-school care, to tutoring and college planning.
- Elder care assistance can take the form of resources or referral programs that may include dependent care spending accounts. Or help can come in the form of day care or hospice care, home health and nutrition services, transportation, or retirement planning.
- The most common flexible scheduling work options are flex-time, part-time employment, work-at-home options, job sharing, and compressed work weeks.
- Onsite personal services are becoming more prevalent at workplaces. Types of onsite personal service include ATMs, travel services, dry cleaners, pet services, and exercise facilities.
Of course, no one lives in an ideal world. Life is always a trade-off to some extent. Looking at your lists may reveal the uncomfortable truth that, for example, your career and your relationships are both very important to you, but are in conflict with each other. But just recognizing this fact is valuable, and will compel you to try to strike the right balance between the two.
To establish a balance in your life, you need to review the various demands and responsibilities you have, both at work and at home. Then you need to determine your priorities and figure out a way to accommodate all the important things you need and want to do. Start by identifying the demands you face. Then decide if any of them are compatible already. Identify changes that can help you, whether they come in the form of childcare and home help options or changes to your work life.