Three Benefits of Having Work-Life Balance

We are living in a world where everyone is busy and people’s schedules are constantly filled to the brim. We have to acknowledge the truth that time is composed of only 24 hours per day, and we can’t add more hours to this. However, most people make the mistake of over-filling their schedules. It’s like filling up a bucket with water constantly overflowing, and thus, wasted. Most of our time is spent in our daily jobs: meeting deadlines, finishing tasks, delivering projects. For some who are working parents, they are plagued with an equal amount of work when they get home: taking care of the kids, doing household chores, maintaining the home.

Thus the term “work-life balance” has been very popular among employees and the human resource teams in organisations. Work-life balance primarily aims to pursue balance between work and personal life. The past years have recognised the importance of physical, mental, and emotional health. Thus, it is for this reason why organisations and individuals strive for attaining a good work-life balance.

People though generally have a hard time achieving this balance. They would normally want to give the best life and opportunities to their families, thus they want to work more in order to do this. Some families overschedule themselves through many activities, both part of school’s or extra-curricular. Some think that “more is better”; that if you are involved in more pursuits or endeavors, you will achieve more and be more successful in life.

Creating balance between work and personal lives bring these three significant and important benefits:

1. Work-life balance is (still) mainly good for our physical, mental and emotional health. Some people are affected by burnout. Burnout in the workplace is a chronic exhaustion and fatigue brought about because of too much work or demands of work. It is just more than simple tiredness. It is accompanied by the same feelings as depression, which leads people to feel withdrawn, demotivated, and less productive. Bringing balance and harmony between work and personal life would help contribute to better health, both physical and mental. It prevents burnouts that often result in low productivity.

 

2. Work-life balance means more time for family. Because of the development in technology over the years, people have been reachable basically 24 hours, 7 days a week. Work emails, messages, chats, and calls can be made round the clock. Employees are then expected to reach for their phones to answer these even when at home. These intrudes on family time, and family members begin to compete for their spouse or parents’ attention. Keeping and observing a strict delineation of time when at home would greatly help maintaining family time. It is important to drop some things and make family your priority.

 

3. Work-life balance means being able to set and impose limits. Learn to say “no” when your time will be unable to accommodate, or when you are already overloaded with work. Set up boundaries between your work and home, and enforce those delineations. Doing these will provide insight and recognition how work-life balance is very critical to you. This encourages pursuing the more important parts of your life outside work.

Carrie Benedet provides coaching and mentoring on work-life balance in the organisation. You can contact her through here.