While we’d like to imagine it as a static, ready-made formula we can buy off the shelf, the reality is work-life balance requires serious experimentation to get it right.
Having been working remotely for most of my professional life, I discovered work-life balance is more about self-management than time management: it’s having the self-awareness of how we operate that will ultimately improve the quality of our daily life.
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With this in mind, I would like to share with you four approaches I have used to empower my work-life balance experience.
1) Establish clear mental and physical boundaries
If you are working from home and have limited space, your biggest struggle might be in finding a clear divide between your work time and personal time. One of the most important actions we can take to change this sense of confusion is to set boundaries.
An example could be treating your workspace as a fun project and giving it character by choosing objects or settings that define it. Think of specific music, light settings, or even the way your chairs are displayed during working hours. This form of mindfulness will allow your brain to create a clear association with those elements and categorize them as work time.
2) Understand how you operate
Spend some time observing yourself. You’ll start to notice your energy levels in connection to your mood and the kind of work you do. You will see moments where you will be energized and are motivated, and others where you will be more tired and procrastinate.
Understanding how your energy fluctuates throughout your day, and what kind of work you find most demanding, will allow you to manage stress more effectively and increase your chances of achieving the work-life balance you are striving for.
For example, if you tend to have low energy in the morning, consider doing something that inspires you and energizes you first before tackling the most challenging activities on your schedule. You will feel a lot better about your day!
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3) Look at things holistically
Another way to bring more purpose to what we do is by understanding how the activities we engage in can represent an opportunity for greater self-empowerment. When we look at our activities as a form of nourishment towards our well-being, we build a more profound relationship with what we do.
For example, when engaging in a desired activity, consider which part you are nurturing — your body, mind, or heart. It will open up new ways of looking at your day, and inspire you to create a diverse mix of combinations to keep things interesting.
This is exactly how we have created the wishlist section at 3SSENTIA!
4) Give more life to your work
Whether we like it or not, work is a big part of what we do as people. Sometimes though, we let events get the best of us, and forget to look at our daily work as an opportunity to care, express, and learn.
A useful approach to help us change our relationship with our daily TO-DOs is to link our salient activities to meaningful opportunities for personal growth and self-improvement.
When you get on a call with a new client, think about how this could represent an opportunity to stretch your abilities or connect with someone: we call this mindful prep! Having this emotional relationship with our work is fundamental to improve our outlook — one of the four necessary conditions for optimum well-being.
Another way to bring more life to our daily work is by changing the way we manage our workload. How many times do we get to the end of our workday feeling like we have no energy left to do the things that are important to us?
A simple way to ensure we maintain healthy energy levels throughout our day is by taking 5-minute little breaks in between tasks. The reality is your energy is finite, and if you learn to respect it, you’ll not only become more present and energized in what you do, but also make more space inside of you to achieve your goals more meaningfully.
5) Put more purpose off work
When it comes to our work, we are often clear on what we want to achieve. So why not take the same approach with our time after work?
A lack of purpose in our off-work activities will most likely lead us to poor decisions and hinder our sense of overall fulfillment. Our brain is naturally hardwired to save energy, so if you finish your workday and have no intentionality in your actions, you will most likely go for the easiest choices, not necessarily the most meaningful ones for you.
Taking the time to understand what’s important to you, although uncomfortable at first, can lead you to explore new topics or activities you never thought of before.
Focus on setting weekly goals on the activities you would love to fulfill and establish the outcome you want to achieve it will help you boost your curiosity and experience a greater sense of progress in your intentions.
Happy work-life balancing!
A passionate entrepreneur with a relentless aspiration to understand what makes people tick , Filippo is the cofounder together with his wife Marilena of 3SSENTIA, a smart day planner inspired by the science of wellbeing that helps busy people manage their day with more balance, focus and purpose.
His background in hospitality combined with his profound interest in subjects such as behavioural science, neuroscience, psychology and human computer interface inspired him to dedicate his efforts in developing technologies that provide “experiences for good”. Filippo is a believer that technology, if used consciously, can have the power to accelerate our evolution and flourishing as human beings. And that is exactly what his mission with 3SSENTIA is: creating a platform aimed at collectively expanding our consciousness and sense of purpose.
Filippo also runs Leap2yourbest (www.leap2yourbest.com), a 2-day personalised coaching program for entrepreneurs wanting to expand their personal and business growth.
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