Work-life balance…does it exist?

Bookmark Article

For years now the mysterious and elusive words "work-life balance" have been thrown around, discussed endlessly, but has anyone actually achieved it? Well some have, limiting themselves to a certain number of hours at work, scheduling in time for the gym, and prioritizing conflicting events.  These changes aren’t simple or easy nor do they work for everyone.  There are only so many hours in the day and sometimes there truly aren’t enough hours in the day to get to the gym, and that’s okay.  

Work-life balance isn’t about fitting in the things that you’re supposed to be doing, but prioritizing the things in your life that are most valuable and important to you. Then shaping your life to align with your values.  This is far easier said than done, but it can be done. 

Perhaps the most important thing to remember with finding your work-life balance is that it is a process. Though it is easy and nice to settle into a routine it’s important to frequently look at what you’re doing and see if that continues to be working as life’s demands are often changing. 

You get a promotion at work, you have a child, or your parents fall ill, no one can anticipate the changes that could come with any of these changes.  Yet if you plan to check in with yourself regularly you can quickly respond to the changes that are happening before you start to feel unbalanced.  

Perhaps the easiest way to stay on top of these changes is to come up with goals for yourself and monitor those.  If you have goals for how much sleep you would like to get, how many times you want to go for a walk after dinner, or how often you would like to go out with friends you can easily track how often those things are happening. 

Of course you will have weeks or months where you don’t get to everything and you haven’t met each of your goals exactly, and that’s okay. What’s necessary is to be aware of that so if they patterns continue and week after week or month after month you still aren’t accomplishing your goals you can make some changes to your work-life balance plan. 

The goal here is not to be perfect, but to be in a better place tomorrow than you are today.