Work Life Balance Challenge

Work/Life Balance.

The elusive balance between having a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. Does it even exist? If so, what’s the secret?

I have pondered this for a long while and the more clients I speak to regarding career coaching, the more I understand just how much we are in control of the work/life balance. During my working life I have always been guilty of throwing myself into each role – passionate, dedicated, enthusiastic, hell bent on delivering to the best of my ability. I’m an all or nothing kind of person and my career has always given me an enormous sense of satisfaction. It gives me routine; it gives me structure and purpose in my life and challenges me in a way nothing else ever has.

This, however, comes at a cost and has been highly detrimental to particular areas of my personal life – health being one of them. Looking back, I have to acknowledge that I am more than partly to blame for this. Did anyone force me to work 80 hours a week? Did anyone force me to go home at stupid o’clock at night and open up my laptop to get in an extra few hours of work? Not really if I’m honest; and yes, there are always times in your working career when putting in the extra hours is absolutely necessary, and you must be able to deliver on deadlines. But are you now thriving on the adrenalin of constantly pushing yourself? Has it become expected by your employer simply because you have always done it? What will happen if you stop working 80 hours a week and drop to 70 (which is still excessive!)? Will your manager fire you?

If you answered yes to that and any of the others and can empathise with at least some of the above sentiment and I feel for you. I feel for you because reversing that now is one of the most difficult things you may ever have to do. Breaking that cycle, changing your own habits and ultimately being viewed differently by colleagues will be an incredibly difficult task.

Time to Take Control

It is time to take control now – I don’t want you to regret what you missed out on in 20 years’ time. Have you thought to look at your life through each of the different lenses and decide where you feel most and least fulfilled?

Try it now. On a scale of 1 - 10 how satisfied are you with the following:

1.       Professional Life

2.       Relationships (Romance & Friendships)

3.       Health & Wellbeing

4.       Finance

5.       Hobbies/ Social Life

6.       Family

Which were your top 3 areas? Which were your lowest 3? Is there a complete imbalance?

Where do you need to start to focus your time to start to redirect the balance?

I call this exercise my Wheel of Life Radar and it is usually an exceptionally good starting point for discussions.

Put it into a pie chart and see it there in front of you.

How does it make you feel?

How bad is the situation?

From my experience here are some of the questions you need to be asking yourself:

1.       Do you take a dedicated lunch break every day?

2.       Do you eat/ drink enough during your working day?

3.       Do you take time away from your desk at regular intervals?

4.       Do you struggle to get out of the office on time?

5.       Do you take work home with you?

6.       Do you struggle to delegate?

7.       Are you constantly checking your work phone – even during the night and over the weekend?

8.       When you are with family and friends do you find your mind wandering off to work projects?

9.       Do you do anything during the week which is just for you?

10.   Do you make excuses not to exercise/ meet friends?

11.   Do you have to drag yourself out of bed in the morning yet struggle to get to sleep at night?

12.   Do you spend more of your weekend sleeping and trying to catch up with work and then worry about how to get your household chores done?

13.   Do you find yourself attending more work social engagements than personal ones?

14.   Do you feel guilty for saying No?

As you have been answering those questions in your mind you probably already have some understanding of what needs to change in your life. It’s not that easy though, I’ve been there myself and sometimes making that change requires drastic action. However, before you contemplate a big career move, let’s try introducing some simple changes to see how much better you feel.

Baby Steps

Let’s start with making some basic changes – things that may not be perceptible at first but will make a huge impact.

1.       Plan out your week ahead – preferably on a Friday afternoon ready for the next week;

2.       Write a to-do list which is separated into sections – Work, Personal, Home, Family etc.;

3.       Decide on a good bedtime for you and stick to it. Try getting 30 more minutes’ sleep a night to begin with and see if it makes a difference;

4.       Don’t look at your work phone for at least 1 hour before you go to bed and do not look at it during the night;

5.       Decide on your final deadline for leaving the office or shutting down your computer. Stick to it for a week and don’t reopen your laptop in the evening.

·       Assess the situation after a week – what did you not deliver?

·       Who was there at your office every morning demanding to know why you hadn’t responded to their emails?

·       How many emails did you miss?

·       Have you thought of introducing an ‘on-call’ rota within your team to make sure that any out of hours urgent requirements can be taken care of effectively?

6.       Schedule in one session of something completely unrelated to work as an extra -curricular event – try a yoga class for example. Put it in your diary and be there! Don’t make work related excuses not to get there! After all, you control this, if you can make that urgent client meeting which is in your diary you can make the class.

 At the end of the week look back at your successes. Create an Achievements list. What were your successes/ achievements in both work and life? How does that feel? What worked and what didn’t?

Like many things in life, there is no real secret to it, it comes down to how much effort you apply to finding it. However, to find it, you need to know what exactly you are looking for. Define what work/life balance means to you and define what needs to change in your life to accommodate that. Then plan, plan, plan…

Our 1-2-1 Mentoring and Group Coaching Classes address the need for work/life balance as an essential ingredient in Career Success and look at different techniques for you to balance your life better. The courses culminate in you writing a clear five-year plan for success in all aspects of your life.

If you would be interested in joining one of the groups, feel free to pop in a 30-minute Discovery Call to find out more: https://calendly.com/candehrconsultancy/discovery-call