While you’re unemployed and actively looking for work, job seeking should be considered your full time job. Having a full time job and managing your personal life can get tricky at times. But learning how to maintain balance between your job-related tasks and your personal responsibilities will give you back some control of your life.
When work and life are balanced, you are better able to give the right amount of attention where it is needed. You find that you can focus on your personal life and professional objectives without burning out. You are going to need energy for your new job. Employers have no interest in hiring an exhausted employee. Most of us work to support a full and enjoyable personal life. It’s best to get into the habit of maintaining good work life balance now before you start your new job.
What Exactly is ‘Work-Life Balance’?
The term ‘work-life balance’ simply means that you are neither working too much, nor too little. You are prioritizing between your “work” and your “lifestyle“. Spreading your time will ensure that all your priorities are dealt with to your satisfaction. You shouldn’t be putting too much pressure on yourself do so. Prioritize your life so that you are focusing on the most important and/or urgent. Remember to build in time for emergencies.
Achieve Work-Life Balance by Using Task Managers
There is so much we could do with our time. We all want to focus our efforts on what gives us and our families the most pleasure. An effective task management system will help you ‘claw back’ the minutes. It will also enable you to get more done.
Task managers allow you to keep up with all the things you have to do. Your life will feel less chaotic. And, when you feel more in control, your day-to-day stress levels will drop.
Examples of task managers include:
If you find yourself putting some goals on the back burner or pushing out some deadlines to allow you more time for the goals achievement, that’s ok! The whole point of creating work-life balance is to make sure you have time to do everything that is important to you.
Delegate or Eliminate
Delegating is an effective strategy for improving your work-life balance. Getting help from friends and family helps take some of the load off of yourself. You could also consider getting a virtual assistant. Ask yourself in relation to every task, “Do I really need to do this in the first place?” Eliminate anything that is unnecessary. Apps like Expensify makes work-life balance easier. The online program also allows easy delegation for follow up and completion.
Ensure that the time allotted to work activities allows you enough time to fulfill your personal responsibilities and enjoy a work-life balance.
Spend time on your personal tasks and interests. Using a task manager to record and display your work and personal tasks by allotted time is a useful tool to gauge how balanced your life is at present and to assist you to make the decisions necessary to improve that balance if necessary.
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Featured Image credit: Sai De Silva
