10 tips for better work-life balance
The Sydney Morning Herald shares10 tips for better work-life balance.
While the advice isn’t ground breaking, it’s simple and, to me, it gets to the heart of the things we need to examine before we decide on any work situation.
The first entry on the list spoke to me:
1. Work out what matters
The first rule of balancing work, family and lifestyle commitments is to be realistic about your needs and goals. It’s far better to know that you won’t be able to manage on a part-time salary before you’ve started discussions with your employer than to realise halfway through.
It’s crucial to be realistic.
Sure, there’s lots of things someone can do regarding work and family, but should they be doing them?
Things tend to fall into place a little better when we’re honest with ourselves.
Before my 3rd child was born, I had a very stressful job, but it paid the majority of the bills. I had responsibilities on both nights and weekends, and I never knew when I was going to be home in the evenings during the week.
I had 2 children already, and I was doing it, but it took the 3rd one to make me realize I should take the chance of going a different direction with less pay but more flexibility. I knew I couldn’t and this took me a little longer to realize, didn’t want to keep doing what I was doing.
It turns out that my mother got sick not too long after that, and it became apparent why I made the right decision.
You’re spot on. Taking an objective look at ourselves is one of the hardest things a human being does. And then having the confidence to take the leap and do it, is also a big hurdle. Glad to see you were able to do both and now are sharing it with the world!
We have 3 kids too, with the youngest being 6 months old. Every one of them has made us step back and reevaluate where in the world we’re going with life, our careers, etc. It’s so important to have the ability and flexibility to be able to stop, reassess and move on in a new direction that really works for your family.
-Kristie
I’m wrestling with this right now. It is very difficult to balance it all and I think I may have made a bad decision to go back to work full time. (at a job that does not offer flexible hours) My kids are really struggling with it and I am too.
Now the one trick you left out that most people miss, is HOW to be critically honest with yourself. (I don’t have an answer though, you can usually guess that any justification that starts with “We can just…” is probably not going to work as well as you anticipate. i.e. We can just cut our energy bill by 10%. If you count on it, then you can almost certainly be assured that whatever steps you take to do that, will probably be offset by a price increase etc.)
Always plan the worst case scenario, not the best, and you have a better shot at what reality will more likely wind up like, and if it falls short of “worst case” then you can be “pleasantly” surprised.
Too many people I suspect THINK they are being honest at the time, but in reality are coating it in wishful thinking.
I left a corporate job in 2001 (we were bought out) for my current job at a smaller more relaxed publishing company. Then I got pregnant four months later! It turned out to be the best thing for our family because I’ve been able to change my schedule around and I now telecommute half my week. I got to travel for my last job to some pretty cool places for conferences, like Puerto Rico and San Diego. Sometimes I miss that glamorous PR type job (ha, ha) but now I like the boring predictability that I have.