Work. Life. Balance.
I worked part time during the winter semester with a full course load at school. I struggled throughout the entire semester to keep balance between work, school, and my personal life. Towards the end of an unhappy, rough, and sleep-less semester, I realized that I failed miserably at keeping up with my responsibility for keeping some semblance of balance in my life. It was and is, like everyone’s, my responsibility to take time out for myself and work to get a balance between work and life.
I realized then that the issue of Work-life balance will not be solved by managers providing flex-time or professors giving fewer assignments. In fact, it comes when you create it for yourself, when you are adamant about making it a priority. There are periods of our lives when this burden will be more intense than others especially for working students or working parents. Tough times like those, we have to demonstrate by achieving a work life balance that we can be excellent workers and excellent parents and or students.
Out of the 7 tips outlined by Jeff Wuorio in “ Need work-life balance? 7 tips”, I found two tips, prioritize ruthlessly and know it won’t be always perfect, very useful to managing my work-life balance and I hope they help you too.
Prioritize ruthlessly:
“The secret to booking your time effectively boils down to knowing what’s important and what can wait. But it’s critical to use the sharpest knife possible in trimming the essential from the secondary” (Jeff Wuorio, Need Work-Life Balance, Microsoft Business). Stick to your priorities and try not to get swayed by things that seem important because they demand your immediate attention (e.g. email, texts, phones).
Know it won’t always be perfect:
Wuorio explains that time management “is not an exact science”. Don’t get caught up in the details because this will end up having the adverse effect, and wasting more time. Acknowledging that “it is not always perfect” can really help in creating a better balance (Jeff Wuorio, Need Work-Life Balance, Microsoft Business).
