Work-life balance is being talked a lot about, but is it something we can truly achieve? Whether you work as an employee or are an entrepreneur, every role comes with many time-consuming responsibilities, only adding more stress to your daily life. When you feel like it’s time for a change, give these following five simple productivity and self-awareness actions a shot, they may just help you improve your work-life balance!

What is a good work-life balance?

A good work-life balance doesn’t necessarily mean you need a lot of time for every part of your life. More often than not, it’s the quality of the time spent on work and with your family.

Everyone has different goals, values, and priorities, making everyone perceive that balance completely differently. One person could work part-time and be overwhelmed by all the work and life tasks, while another rocks everything while working a full-time job and having a side business.

What matters here is how you specifically feel and perceive your life. If you are generally quite happy about how your days go and have more or less enough time for work and for your work-free time with family, kids, friends, and hobbies, then congratulations! You seem to have a perfect work-life balance. Keep it up!

When is the balance disturbed?

Unfortunately, it’s so easy to lose that balance in our fast-living world.

Do you feel you are suffocating at the job and not having enough time for your family, kids, and friends? Or maybe it’s the opposite, and you are so obligated with your daily chores that you can’t do the job you want?

Whenever you are unhappy about how your days go, and by that, I mean not one-day-exception but rather repetitive day-to-day life for a prolonged period, you most probably need to change something.
When the balance is disturbed, there is a high risk of burnout, and no one wants that. So how do you bring harmony back into your life?

5 simple actions to improve your work-life balance

Improve your sleep

We read it again and again, yet getting a good night of sleep is still so underestimated. Before you try to change anything else, try to improve your sleep. Getting more rest will give you more energy, improve your hormonal health, and make you more productive throughout the day.

Apply productivity tips

Try applying some productive techniques at your work or even with your daily chores. It may be working in Pomodoro cycles where you combine short and highly productive chunks with short rest in between, or even a prioritization matrix to understand what tasks you should focus on right now.

Set up your priorities

And I don’t mean daily prioritization of the tasks here. What I mean is your priorities in life. How would you like your days to look? What is the most essential thing in the world for you? What are the non-negotiables for you in your day-to-day life? What would make you happy, and what would make you unhappy?

Go a step further and create a new calendar called “My dream week” and schedule your days as you’d like them to be, just to get an idea first.

Turn off work notifications

Sometimes it’s hard to turn off our heads from work, even after the workday. Even in our free time, we would still check our emails from time to time, check on clients, etc. No wonder it feels like we are working 24/7 without any break!

Give yourself that break. Set up your available work hours, and everything beyond that is your free time! Turn off any work notifications, do not go and check “just for one minute”. You worked enough for the day. Enjoy your life now!

Know when it’s time to step back

Despite everything, sometimes, whenever we try to bring the balance back, it doesn’t work. Sometimes there are too many responsibilities, a massive workload, an inflexible work schedule, or no support available.

When every day feels like torture, and you are genuinely not happy, it’s time to step back. Depending on your individual situation, maybe you can ask for some support, fewer responsibilities at work, or maybe it’s time for a new job.