Work Life Balance: Establishing and Maintaining Effective Professional Boundaries
No one can work all the time and maintain optimum productivity. Yet, the way that many of us live our lives is driven by constant ‘doing’ and pressure to fulfill infinite demands.
We all need breaks, time to recharge and time to focus on other areas of our lives and for many of us, these breaks can be enmeshed with feelings of guilt or thoughts that we are ‘wasting time’ or ‘not doing enough”.
It can be tough to set boundaries when you’re juggling a job with family responsibilities or a busy social life and, somehow, we get to a point where we recognize the importance of this ‘down’ time for our rejuvenation and mental health care.
Working from Home
When you work from home especially, it can be difficult to create a clear boundary between your work life and personal life. This is especially true if you don’t have set hours or a designated workspace.
Working from home can be a great way to have more control over your work schedule and enjoy a better work-life balance. However, it can also be easy to let your work life spill over into your personal life if you’re not careful.
Creating Healthy Boundaries
Living a life with good work-life balance is a challenge for many people. Creating healthy boundaries for ourselves is one of the best things we can do for our work-life balance. When we set clear and effective boundaries, we empower ourselves to manage our time and energy in a way that supports our goals.
Professional Boundaries
Professional boundaries are guidelines that help us to identify and draw clear lines between what is acceptable with regard to our choices in how we manage our time and what tasks we allow when working and while at home in our ‘down’ time.
Without them, we quickly become overwhelmed and stressed. By setting clear boundaries, we can protect our time and energy, and ensure that we are able to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Here are six tips for doing just that:
1) Establish specific work hours and stick to them. Try to keep specific hours for work and stick to them as closely as possible. This will help you create a sense of separation between the two and avoid feeling like you’re always working.
2) Avoid working while you’re home unless it’s an emergency or you have designated hours for working.
3) Set a specific workspace in your home that is used solely for work and keep all of your work-related items in that space.
4) If you have family or pets, establish rules for when they are allowed in your workspace and when they are not.
5) Disconnect from work when you’re not at work. Resist the urge to check email or answer calls during your personal time. This will help you relax and enjoy your time off guilt-free.Turn off your computer or put it away when you’re done working for the day.
6) Take vacation days and use them to really unplug from work.
Working from home can be a great way to have more control over your work schedule and enjoy a better work-life balance. However, it can also be easy to let your work life spill over into your personal life if you’re not careful.
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