Work-Life Balance: Separate Your Professional Life to Improve Your Performance

In the era where there’s a significant shift in the work patterns and lifestyle, work-life balance is hard to achieve. A strategy to set a fine border to keep personal and professional life apart is urgently needed.

The pandemic has brought us a new trend of hybrid working. With the development of technology, it’s possible to work a full time-job remotely. However, this new trend blurs the boundary between professional and personal life. Managers and coworkers can easily reach each other anywhere, at any time. Under such circumstances where everything collides, is it possible to keep both worlds apart?

How to Separate Professional and Personal Life

Owing to overwhelming work demands and tight deadlines, people often pay more attention to their business-related issues over their personal ones. Such practice is not healthy, because it causes both mental and physical stress due to the imbalance between work and life. Separating the two is crucial to achieve enough rest and meet both personal and professional fulfillment.

This sounds hard to do, but it’s not impossible. There are several ways you can do to achieve an ideal work-life balance.

Come and leave work on time

Being professional could mean anything, but staying at the office until late at night doesn't count. If your work hours start at 9, try to arrive 10-15 minutes earlier, so you have time to prepare yourself before starting on your tasks. When your work hours ends, avoid staying too long in your cubicle to complete the ongoing tasks. Unless they are very urgent, you can always come back tomorrow to finish them.

Take short breaks throughout the day

Sitting in front of your monitor for a long time is not good for your eyes and back. It’s important to take a small break in between your working time. Consider light exercises that you can do around your space. If possible, try walking around the office to grab a coffee or during lunch hour. Aside from physical exercises, there are also meditation apps to help you calm your mind and destress.

Find activities outside your work

Don't let your job define your personality. As a way to refresh your mind from the daily work fatigue, pick up something that has nothing to do with your job roles. Pick up new hobbies to take your mind off of work, for example cooking, painting, or cycling. Find friends from your new hobby and take some time off to do the hobby together.

Manage time effectively

Make a schedule that works for you. Keep it flexible enough to accommodate unforeseeable cases that might happen, but try to adhere to your schedule. Set small goals that are realistic to follow by breaking your project into smaller tasks. Not only does this help tracking your completion progress, this also reduces stress levels because your work will feel manageable. 

Learn how to refuse politely

Sometimes you already have a lot on your table, but your manager wants to add another workload. You don’t have to accept it every time. It’s actually okay to refuse workloads that aren’t your primary responsibilities. While it’s sometimes okay to help when your office is short-staffed, you don’t want it to be an open-ended arrangement. It can lead to another workload, and you will end up staying overtime in the office.

Why You Should Keep a Balanced Life

Unfortunately, burnouts are common among workers. In fact, 78% of Singaporean workers still complain of being burnt out from their jobs, according to Singapore Business Review. 80% of the surveyed employees still reported to work because they either have nobody to cover for them or they still have too much work to do.

Everyone needs time to recharge their energy to be able to function properly. A bad work-life balance can affect our health, both mentally and physically. For instance, someone who works overtime constantly has a 60% higher risk of heart-related problems than those who didn’t work overtime, according to The Happiness Index.

Additionally, if employees get a proper rest time, they won’t be easily distracted. They won’t constantly think about getting home. In result, they will be more productive during the day, increasing the level of employee engagement at work. That’s why every worker needs to have a proper work-life balance.

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