How not to burn at work and have time to live: 10 tips
alexander savina
Universal rules of how to build your work scheduleso that there is time and energy for personal affairs, no. Each puts its meaning in the concept of a balance between work and personal life. Nonetheless, entrepreneurs, office workers, and freelancers working from home face the same problem. We have collected a few general recommendations that will help you build a suitable regime.
Mark the border
The first and most obvious advice: talking about the balance between professional and personal life is impossible if you do not know where one ends and the second begins. You can literally draw a line with rituals. Julianne Miles, co-founder of consulting company Women Returners, for example, advises coming home to change clothes from work clothes. If you work from home, it’s better to set aside a special zone for business - when you sit down from behind the desktop on your favorite sofa, you will immediately realize that it’s time to rest. Find what helps you switch from one mode to another. This may be a book that you read in the subway, a short walk around the house with a dog when you do not think about business, or a habit of getting into a car to pause for a minute, mentally saying that the working day is over.
Almost everyone has situations where you need to take work at home - but in this case, you can draw boundaries. Choose a time when you will not be engaged in business (weekend, a few hours before bedtime - how much it will turn out) and try to keep to a clear schedule. Initially, it will not be easy, but a steady regime and rules will help.
Prioritize
So that the work does not interfere with your personal life and vice versa, first of all you need to determine what is important to you. Be honest with yourself: everyone has different goals and priorities, so you shouldn’t focus on the expectations of parents or others. Try to build your schedule in accordance with what is important to you: the opportunity to pick up children from school or receive additional education in the evening, go to the doctor’s office in the afternoon or go to the pool in the morning. Employers are often willing to make concessions to employees, the main thing is not to be afraid of honest and open conversation.
Learn to refuse
Only you know the limit of your capabilities, and if something is beyond your power, it’s better to say it directly. Do not be afraid to tell your boss if you cannot cope with the flow of tasks: in the end, this always affects productivity, and it is better if the situation can be prevented.
It will be easier to distinguish between work and personal life if you learn to say no to additional tasks for which you do not have the time and energy. Coach Melanie Allen advises not to immediately agree to requests to do something above the norm, but to take a short pause and think: “Say that you will answer a little later and use this time to decide whether to agree or not. If you want to say yes ", Everything is in order. But, if you want to give up, say" no "and stand on yours."
Stop checking messages
Smartphones allow us to be in touch 24/7 - and if in the case of friends and family it pleases, in the case of work it only hinders: we continue to solve business problems, even when we left the office. E-mail and instant messengers may cause inconvenience: when checking correspondence with friends, we will perforce read other messages. Unlike other forms of communication, such as the traditional phone call, there are no clear boundaries - a working email can come at seven in the morning and at one in the morning. Therefore, you should set these limits for yourself.
For example, you can turn off notifications in the mail or in the messenger or turn on the night mode on your smartphone after a certain hour. You can set up an auto answer for the weekend, so that the interlocutors know when to expect news from you: it's not always people who need to get information urgently, many people just need to know that you received the message and will contact them later. Of course, there are exceptions and urgent situations when it is impossible not to answer, but they should not become a rule - otherwise you will not notice how you will burn out.
Try to work not longer, but more productively.
The time when the unions struggled to reduce the length of the working day is long gone. Now we are seeing the opposite trend: regular processing is becoming the norm, and many people take work on weekends as a matter of course - although scientists believe that it is harmful to health. We often think that if we sit a little longer, then we will definitely have time for everything - but this is self-deception: the longer we work, the more our productivity drops. In addition, having finished one thing, you can always take up the next - and so on to infinity.
The rude phrase "You need to work not eight hours, but your head" fits here as well as possible: in order not to get bogged down in routine and affairs, you need to be able to build priorities (not all tasks are equally important - although we often think so) and pick out the strictly defined time to complete each of the tasks. It is also useful advice not to scatter small things: do not try to do several things at the same time and do not get distracted by e-mail and instant messengers - you will be surprised how long the habit takes every ten minutes to check messages.
Don't push yourself
We have already told how perfectionism harms self-development. Over the years, we have more and more additional tasks and responsibilities, and it is becoming more and more difficult to make them perfect - and is it necessary? It is sometimes useful to let go of the situation and be prepared for the fact that you have to sacrifice something. If you don’t have the strength to cook a complex dinner after work, you shouldn’t reproach yourself that you have to confine yourself to pizza: this way you will save yourself from burning out. Both in workers and in personal affairs one does not need to strive to do everything flawlessly - it suffices to try to fulfill one’s duties well.
Think of a different chart.
In the modern world, in order to be a good employee, it is far from always necessary to be present in the office from nine to six: many questions can be resolved by working mail, and instead of a meeting you can hold a Skype call. It is believed that in the office it is easier to control what the employee is doing, but for many, working from home, without noisy colleagues, helps to focus better and ultimately work more efficiently. So if this is your option, do not be afraid to talk about it with your employer: if you can easily finish the case from home, after you put the children to bed, there is no point in trying to complete it by six in the evening. Moreover, if you choose flexible hours or work at home, set restrictions (see the first paragraph) - otherwise there is a risk that you will work as before or even more, because you will not be able to disconnect from the process in time.
Choosing a company, pay attention to what work schedule is accepted here: if everyone stays in the office until 11 pm and is used to going to work at the weekend, it is unlikely that you will be able to come home at seven.
Delegate tasks
Often we strive to do as much as we can, because we think that we can control the process better - but this is not the most productive approach. Concentrate first of all on what you can do only, and try to delegate part to others — be it minor tasks that will allow you to finish work earlier, or household chores that you do not have enough strength for. Stuart Friedman, a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, advises you to agree on sharing responsibilities with key players in different areas of your life — colleagues, partners, and loved ones. Such situations can help others to learn something new, and you will be a little unloaded, so that you can do other things.
Be more attentive to yourself
Only you know how much effort you actually invest in business - so listen to the sensations and work at a pace that is comfortable for you (yes, in any work there are emergency situations, but they should not become the norm). The British non-profit organization Mental Health Foundation advises to pay attention to how work tiredness builds up: observe for a few weeks how much time you spend on things - not only in the office, but also thinking about future projects or, for example, answering calls and letters in the hours outside the office. All this is part of the work (although we are accustomed to not paying attention to it), because of which fatigue also accumulates. If you become aware of the scale of the disaster, it will be easier for you to control your condition.
Start small change
Do not expect that you will be able to change your lifestyle instantly: change requires willpower, and the more ambitious goal you set for yourself, the more likely you are to leave this venture. If you want to start leaving the office on time, do not expect to be able to do it immediately five days a week. Start gradually: try to leave early one day a week, for example, on Friday, and then try to do it more often.