work from home work-life balance

15 Best Ways to Find a Healthy Work-Life Balance

Do you feel like all you do is work, work, work? Maintaining the perfect work-life balance can reduce stress and employment burnout and boost overall well-being. However, finding the balance between work and life goals can prove challenging sometimes. 

What Is a Work-Life Balance?

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A healthy work-life balance fosters a harmonious relationship between your personal and professional lives, equally prioritizing the two. However, it’s not uncommon for people to struggle to understand and find their balance. 

How Do I Know if My Workload Is Too Much?

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Many indicators signal that your workload is too much, including working long and excessive hours, decreased productivity, increased stress, declining health, neglected personal life, and feeling less enthusiastic about your job. If you’re demonstrating any of these warning signs, it’s time to find your balance.

How Do I Improve My Work-Life Balance?

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There isn’t any one-size-fits-all solution regarding work-life balance because everyone leads individual lives with different circumstances. But you can take several steps to discover what works best for you. 

1. Follow a Schedule

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The first step to maintaining harmony is to create a schedule and stick to it. Many factors must be considered when developing a daily routine that works for you, including meals, breaks, appointments, and accommodating the needs of kids and spouses, if applicable. Make your schedule flexible and extend yourself grace when it doesn’t run smoothly. 

2. Establish Boundaries

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What are your values? What do you want your day to look like? What do you envision your life looking like? Identify what essentials in your life are important and non-negotiable and build your schedule accordingly. 

3. Take Breaks

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Stop working yourself to death! Take breaks. Did you know that by scheduling and taking breaks, you are not only practicing good time management but will also come back to your workload more productive with increased creativity? Getting up to stretch, take a walk, get a coffee, or enjoy 15 minutes in the sun is key to successfully balancing your life.

4. Designate a Time to End Your Work Day

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Setting a definitive time to end your work day fosters balance. A stopping time guarantees you shift your attention and the day’s intention. Working from home can make this challenging but necessary.

Do what you need to do to close your computer and walk away. Change into after-work clothes, keep your work in a separate space on which you can close the door, and commit to whatever else you’ve designated to your balanced schedule.

5. Prioritize Family

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As someone who has struggled with being a workaholic and has to be the best employee everywhere I go, I know it’s not worth it. Your boss does not care about you. You are expendable.

I’ve sacrificed many hours away from my kids to try to make an utterly narcissistic boss happy, an impossible feat and a terrible mistake that left me tossed under a bus without a second thought. Prioritize family. 

This quote resonates with me: “20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids.” — Sahil Bloom. 

6. Prioritize Self

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Prioritizing self-care is a significant factor in maintaining a good work-life balance. If you’re not taking care of yourself, how can you take care of anything else? 

Add balance with whatever self-care looks like to you. Hair, nail, and massage appointments? Sporting events, girls’/guys’ night, or theater? Facilitating a social life is part of prioritizing oneself. Maintain friendships; isolation is never healthy. 

The Surgeon General warns, “Disconnection fundamentally affects our mental, physical, and societal health. In fact, loneliness and isolation increase the risk for individuals to develop mental health challenges in their lives, and lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking daily.”

7. Volunteer

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Volunteering your time is an excellent way to make social connections and boost your mental health. Cultivating meaningful time with charitable acts makes it easier to see the bigger picture and pull away from work. Volunteer your time feeding people experiencing homelessness, facilitating canned food drives, or working to help veterans

8. Indulge a Hobby

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Participate in your established passions or find exciting new hobbies. Life isn’t only about working and responsibilities. You need to have fun, too. What excites you? Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn? Add it to the schedule. 

9. Take Your Days Off

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Take your days off. God didn’t create you to work yourself into an early grave. Recently published research indicates that 46% of Americans do not use all the paid time off their employer allows, confirming that nearly half of the population prioritizes work over self. 

10. Take Sick Days

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When you’re sick, it’s vital that you let your body rest to get well quicker. Working through sicknesses can exacerbate the duration and risk infecting your coworkers. As someone who worked in food service for managers who would not allow you to call in, find other employment. It’s not acceptable to be expected to work when you’re ill. 

11. Master Time Management

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Effective time management is your best ally in keeping the balance. Discover which time management tips work best for you and implement them. Time blocking is an effective scheduling style that helps keep your time spent in check. You may also benefit from setting reminders on your phone.

12. Get Adequate Sleep

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Despite knowing adequate sleep is pertinent to a healthier life, Americans aren’t getting enough sleep. Chronic health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease, stroke, obesity, and depression, are linked to sleep deficiency. 

13. Make Time for Exercise

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Exercise releases endorphins and reduces stress and anxiety but also plays a role in work-life balance. Science Daily elaborates, “Individuals who exercised regularly were more confident they could handle the interaction of their work and home life and were less likely to be stressed at work.”

14. Pray About It

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As with everything else in life, give it to God. Pray about your specific needs. What do you need to be a happy, successful, and well-rounded human being? Prayer journaling is a solid way to document your prayers, and proves wonderful to reflect to see God moving in your life. 

15. Give Yourself Grace

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Refrain from beating yourself up when your schedule doesn’t go perfectly. Life happens, so be sure to give yourself some grace. Illnesses, emergencies, and other unexpected events will occur. Sometimes, things take longer than anticipated. Let go of the expectation of perfect and remain flexible. 

Read More: 10 Job Interview Red Flags That Should Make You Run for the Door

gossip coworker secret
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Want to know how to recognize a terrible workplace from the moment you start your interview process? Here are some small (and massive) red flags to look out for during your interviewing process.

10 Job Interview Red Flags That Should Make You Run for the Door

15 Professions That Get the Most Hate Just for Doing Their Jobs

fast food employee
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Let’s face it: some professions get a ton of hate for people simply doing their jobs. For example, who honestly respects bill collectors? It’s a job and one that needs to be done. However, one can only imagine the disrespect they receive when ringing up people demanding money. Here are several other professions that often get the short end of the stick.

15 Professions That Get the Most Hate Just for Doing Their Jobs

15 Men’s Products That Are Superior to Women’s and Cheaper Too!

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Have you ever heard of the “Pink Tax”? The Pink Tax is discriminatory pricing that inflates the cost of products marketed to women, and it’s absurd. A recent online discussion about which men’s products are superior and cheaper provided these helpful insights. Did you know?

15 Men’s Products That Are Superior to Women’s and Cheaper Too!

 

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Elizabeth Ervin helps people embrace a change in money mindset to achieve their financial goals. After struggling for a decade as a single mother, consumed by the American debt cycle, she recognizes the value of financial education and lifestyle changes and aspires to motivate others to make those changes to obtain financial freedom. She heavily advocates for praying about and over your finances and speaking positive money affirmations to manifest abundance.

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