How Do Women Maintain Work & Life Balance?
6-July-2021 |
For some, the day is balanced when you can sign out from work and reach home in time for dinner with your family. Some enjoy spending free time working on finances and formulating a savings plan. Others may view work-life balance as a flexible schedule so that you can manage both household chores and work.
In short, work-life balance is when you have ample time on your hands to concentrate on your full-time job and pursue the personal interests you love. However, with impending deadlines or the fear of losing out on promotions, one side of your life uses up too much of your time and energy than the other.
But don’t worry, like many women who’ve made a mark in their field—Beyonce Knowles winning hearts with her music, Serena Williams, the ultimate boss woman on the tennis court Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman to go to space, or Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors—you can handle this too! All you need to learn is how to maintain a work-life balance. Let’s see how.
Get a head start
Setup your priorities
Make a schedule
Identify things that eat into your time
Eliminate distractions during breaks
Delegate
Learn to say ‘no’
Rather than having a rushed morning, make full use of the ‘golden hour’ with an early start to your day. Whether it’s household chores, firing off work emails, examining your income tax deductions, or just getting some ‘you’ time with your morning cup of coffee, feel connected with yourself, grounded, and ready for the day ahead.
As a working woman, you have various responsibilities professionally and other commitments personally. From answering work calls to cooking dinner or browsing savings insurance plans, everything seems urgent. This urgency can be overwhelming, hampering your productivity at work and home. The solution is prioritizing. Chalking out your priorities will help you understand what you need to prioritize.
Tip: Rather than dipping your fingers into everything, target a certain task, finish it, and move to the next. Don’t worry. With constant practice and conscious effort, you’ll master the art of prioritizing and getting things done.
Even for those not fans of rigidity, a schedule is a blessing in disguise. With the help of a schedule, you’ll feel less anxious and more in control of your time. You can create a simple to-do list for your daily tasks. Then as your day progresses, you can keep checking boxes.
Some tips you can use are an excel spreadsheet to jot down financial information like income tax deductions or maintain your weekly schedule, set reminders on your phone for urgent tasks, or even go old school with a pen and paper. Use a comfortable method that will help you organize your thoughts, which translates into objectively going about your day.
Just remember, don’t become fixated on the schedule. Every day has its ebbs and flows. Let it flow naturally. If an activity gets pushed to the next day, it’s all right.
It’s time to start handling things such as grocery shopping, bill payments, making deposits into your savings plan, and other mundane activities efficiently.
All it takes is some simple planning and making use of the facilities available at your fingertips, such as the auto-deduct facility for bill payments, spending a few minutes shopping online, or looking for different Tata AIA Life Insurance Plans online instead of visiting the branch.
Even if you save an hour, it means more time for work or quality time with your family, loved ones, or children.
That break to check out the latest items on sale or a few minutes extra with your chatty friend/coworker is irresistible. However, without you realizing it, such activities eat into your time that you can instead utilize to finish your work quickly.
Of course, you can’t work non-stop for 10 to 12 hours and need breaks. But rather than indulging in random, uncalled distractions, find better ways to use your break time. Take a proper lunch break for 60 minutes where you disengage completely from work, get some fresh air, or take a quick power nap for 20 minutes to refresh yourself. These short, healthy breaks are restoring and make you more productive.
That entrepreneur you religiously admire who looks like she’s got it all together is successful because she chooses what she does and delegates the rest. Delegate work-related tasks to your colleagues, and you can divide home-related tasks among family members.
Delegation is a way to finish off your never-ending to-do list and get better results in a shorter period.
Tip: If you fear the tasks won’t be completed to perfection, take a few minutes to explain and train your delegates.
As a woman, you’re needed to be available at all times. Whether something spilled in the kitchen or something came up at work. It’s time to offload this by learning to say no. When you’ve got your hands full, it’s okay to refuse work. Similarly, it’s okay to tell your children to clean up their own mess or your partner to handle tasks related to your savings insurance. The idea is to stop biting off more than you can chew so you can maintain a healthy balance between work and home.
Who Runs the World? Women!
From steadily climbing the corporate ladder to a blissful marriage, women can dream of having it all in this modern world.
All it takes is the knowledge of how to strike the right chords to maintain a healthy work-life balance. If you’re confused about where to begin, use this list as a blueprint. Don’t hurry; take baby steps. Implement a few changes every week and keep adding new ones at a comfortable pace. This way, you’ll ease into a new routine and remain consistent. Trust yourself, your journey, and do what’s best for you.