Work-Life Balance Series, Part 2: Tips for Sustaining a Healthy Work-Life Balance

1. Focus on physical and emotional health and wellbeing

• Eat a healthy, balanced diet full of vitamins and minerals and plenty of proteins and fibre. With every meal, you can use the ‘rainbow trick’. This involves making sure each plate of food contains a variety of different coloured foods (plenty of fruit and veg!), ensuring you’re getting essential nutrients into your diet everyday. ^{[Ref 1]}
• Stay hydrated and aim to drink around 2-3 litres of water everyday so that your body can function at its best.
• Exercise regularly to reduce stress and boost your energy levels.
• Aim for at least seven hours of sleep every night and establish a regular sleep routine. You should avoid consuming caffeine towards the latter half of the day and limit the use of screens before bedtime to ensure that you get a good rest.^{[Ref 2]}
• Perform short, meditative exercises. This could include using your senses to ground yourself in the present, thinking about what you can smell, touch, taste, see, and hear. You could also practice deep breathing exercises.^{[Ref 3]} For example, you could have a go at the 4-7-8 breathing technique: breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7, and exhale for 8.^{[Ref 4]} Feel your stress melt away.
• Follow your passions and pursue activities you enjoy, finding ways to integrate them into your daily life. E.g., At lunchtime, you might go for a short walk around the block, do a quick yoga stretching session, or listen to a chapter of an audiobook.

2. Break unhealthy habits that may dominate your life

• Drop activities that drain your time or energy. This could include limiting the amount of time you spend watching TV, playing video games, or mindlessly scrolling.
• Learn to say no and be selective and cognisant about your commitments, being careful not to overcommit yourself. Do what makes you happy and say no to anything that drains you or negatively affects your physical or emotional wellbeing.
• Be mindful of any tendencies to stress eat or eat sugary, fatty snacks to boost your energy when you’re feeling unmotivated or tired.

3. Improve your time management skills

• Be aware of your peak productivity hours and use them to your advantage. When do you work best?
• Once you’ve identified your most productive hours, you should structure your day to tackle important and urgent tasks during these times. You can use the Eisenhower Principle to do this, categorising and completing tasks based on their urgency and importance.^{[Ref 5 & 6]}

• Categorise your emails based on priority and urgency – you could flag or mark your inbox’s contents to make this more visual. It might also be wise to set boundaries with your co-workers, ensuring that your focus times aren’t interrupted by a bombardment of communications that break your flow and make it tricky for you to complete tasks. Perhaps you would benefit from factoring in a designated time everyday to respond to emails and calls.
• Control meetings and limit their time to ensure they are productive and do not consume too much of the day. Plan the points you need to discuss and don’t waste time – focus on each one clearly and concisely, aiming to leave meetings feeling like you’ve tackled exactly what you came in for.
• Schedule downtime and take breaks during the working day. It could be something as simple as walking 100 steps or stretching out. This will help you maintain your focus and productivity levels.
• At the end of each working day, perform a self-analysis. What went well? What do you need to improve? How can you make these adjustments? This can stop your working hours from going awry, detecting any snags before they snowball and cause you stress or tension that’s hard to unpick.

4. Focus on healthy social interactions

• Where family and friends are concerned, focusing on quality time is essential. Make the most of your weekends and holidays by catching up with them and doing activities you all enjoy together. Taking a decent break at the weekends will help you to return to your work feeling refreshed and motivated to power through your to-do list and feel more on top of things.
• Being constantly connected can be overwhelming. Be conscious about when and how you use social media. If you think that it’s taking up too much of your time or affecting you negatively, reduce how often you go online – usage limits on specific apps can help with this, as can adjusting your phone’s ‘focus’ or ‘downtime’ settings.