Work-Life Balance: Is It Overrated and How to improve it?

What is work-life balance?

In short work-life balance is when an individual equally balances their career demands and personal lives.

There are a lot of reasons that can lead to an imbalance in life. Some of the more common reasons that lead to disruption in work-life balance are

1. Working longer shifts
2. Increased responsibilities at home
3. Demanding responsibilities at work
4. Having children
5. Being a perfectionist

If you fall in life, neither your boss nor client will offer you a helping hand; your family and friends will.

Why is work-life balance is overrated?

Machines are far more efficient as compared to humans, part of the reason this is because a machine programmed to perform a certain task will only focus on that task.

Machine's goal is exceptionally clear, the more limited the goals, the higher the chances of efficiency. Unlike machines, our brains are complex organs not evolved to be maximally efficient at only one thing.

We might not be best at drawing, basketball, or skiing, we might not be good at public speaking, making good relationships.

Someone somewhere is always better at something than us; this may be quite depressing to think about at first, as we look back at our day in bed, wandering in thoughts before sleep.

But we should consider that us not being perfectly flawless at certain activities is a choice that we've made to be good at other activities.

And that's a very wise choice as trying to be perfect at all the things in a day leads to overload of work and stress, which may, in turn, lead to poor work-life balance and performance. As focusing on one activity and excluding others has its consequences.

For example, an athlete who trains 11 hours every day is always in a state of rush and performance anxiety.

Unfortunately, our society has set up an absurd idea that it is possible to be optimally effective at all things and do them completely well. This is why we hear the common term Work-life Balance.

How to make work-life balance work for us?

All the debates and discussions about flexible timings, paternity leaves, or easy-going schedule only serve to mask the core issue that certain jobs and career choices are fundamentally incompatible to be meaningfully allowing to engage with a young family on a day to day basis

We need to first accept the reality of the situation we're living in, and the fact is we're in a society where thousands of people are leading their lives being miserably quiet, screaming inside in depression, working long, hard hours struggling to thrive in society at jobs they despise to buy things they don't like to impress people they don't care about.

And we need to come to the terms that governments and establishments aren't going to solve this issue for us. It is our own responsibility to take control of our lives and how we want to lead it.

You should never put the quality of life in the hands of a commercial corporation, as these companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you as possible. It's what they do, it's what these companies and their systems are designed to do, even the good, well-intentional companies.

We have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries that we want in our life.

Some of the following tips may help you better deal with balancing your professional career and personal lives

Better Time Management

Dedicate your time to high-priority tasks, make a weekly plan, or monthly you can use simple pen and paper or you can use digital applications such as Google Calendar.

On desktop Google calendar has a complete dedicated system for your tasks management and planning, it has integrated Google tasks and Google keep, where you can simultaneously write tasks on the calendar or the google tasks and make reminders and deadlines for it.

Google calendar, tasks, and keep also have dedicated applications for mobile phones as well. You can easily write down your thoughts on the keep then plan accordingly in tasks and calendar.

Giving time to your family and friends as much as you do to work and planning for this is extremely easy in google calendar.

It is hard to fit all your tasks in a 24 hours time period so you can stretch your tasks to weekly and make sub-tasks for each of them.

Everyone has a different routine some people have jobs in the morning some have night shifts, nonetheless waking up early according to your schedule gives you extra hours in a day.

In a day it is important only to sleep 8 hours so you can cut some of your sleeping hours in order to make more time.

Waking up early also gives you much clarity in thinking about what your high-priority tasks may be and how to deal with them, divide these tasks into subtasks for easier completion, and in the morning when everyone is sleeping it is easy to plan projects and tasks easily.

Avoid Multitasking

It is hard to focus on one thing when you are overwhelmed with multiple tasks and upcoming deadlines. I also feel like if I focus on one thing I'll lose precious time for another.

Cooking food, while reading a book and surfing on social media talking to a friend is a recipe for disaster. You won't either be able to absorb any knowledge from the book and your food will also be overcooked.

Multitasking is overrated. It is a recipe for disaster.

Try monotasking instead of multitasking as it leads to quality work output instead of just multitasking while not able to properly complete any tasks at hand.

Intellect without intentions is the key to multitasking

Have a social life

Social well-being with other individuals is critical for mental health, which in turn is vital to overall health.

The lack of social interactions is shown to increase stress-related hormones, poor immune system, and weak physical health. If you talk to elderly people about what they miss the most in life the most common answer is family and friends.

To be healthy in life does not mean we need 5000 friends on Facebook but having few quality friends and family that we can connect to on a regular basis, without overthinking and having fear of judgments can help boost serotonin and lessen anxiety and depression.

Have some recurring social activities scheduled in your calendar so you can plan around them easily.

Networking events related to your career can help kill two birds with one stone, you can make new connections with individuals in your field plus interact socially with other people.

Stop Perfectionism

Perfectionism is the self-defeating ambition of completing tasks absolutely right. Perfectionism is a persona that sets you up for failure.

The core of perfectionism lies within thoughts of being in an ideal state and completing every task flawlessly.

But bringing those changes in life, completing tasks with such a perfectionist mindset makes life a living hell for us and for those around us. As we constantly judge ourselves if we're up to the mark or not and become controlling of others.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple in 1985 after a long period of struggle was forced out of Apple by the then-CEO John Sculley. The same year Jobs with some of his former employees from Apple started a new computer development company NeXT oriented towards building computer Educational institutes and business markets.

The computer was to be housed in a black cube-shaped case, in Steve Job's biography by Walter Isaacson he mentioned that the black paint that covered the outside of the case also be applied in the inside of the case and that too at extra cost.

Even though no customer would ever open the case and see the paint for themselves.

This story illustrates Steve Job's famous qualities: his perfectionism.

Jobs demanded absolute perfection of all the hardware and software that he and his team developed and it is one of the reasons why Jobs was notoriously hard to work for.

But the legacy left behind by Jobs and by other famous perfectionists makes it seem like perfectionism is worth striving for.

Most people wear it as a badge of honor, that's why "I'm a perfectionist" is a famous answer to the age-old interviewing question "what's your greatest weaknesses".

But perfectionism is really a weakness, as the drawback outweigh the beneficial points.

The pressure of a perfectionist mindset

Perfectionism leads to performance anxiety and work-related stress, trying to do everything in the most ideal way possible and then not being able to accomplish your goals according to the plan puts you under depression and raises your stress levels.

It can also stop individuals from achieving things if they think they won't be able to meet their expectations.

Perfectionism leads to procrastination

Perfectionists often put off tackling tasks and projects, make them seem more complex, set the bar for themselves so high, and make unrealistic expectations and therefore end up avoiding the task altogether waiting for the right time and solutions.

Exercise Regularly

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Exercise as everyone knows is good for mental health. It lowers stress and anxiety, regulates brain sensitivity towards serotonin and norepinephrine, these hormones are shown to relieve depression. Exercise also releases endorphins which also improves mood and mindset.

And intense exercise is not necessary even lite bodyweight exercise can help stimulate these hormones, if you cannot go to the gym you can exercise at home, exercises as simple as situps and pushups can elevate mood and help you fight throughout the day.

Exercise done in the early morning can increase your energy level for the day plus it also helps with weight loss.

Work-life Balance: Summary

Balancing your career and personal is life is your own responsibility; you should never put organizations and corporations in charge of designing your life as they are built to absorb as much energy from you as possible.

In the end, if you fall in life only your family and friends will help and take care of you, so spend more time with them.