If you are reading this, chances are you are either great or awful at maintaining your work-life balance.

 

If you are great, you want another acknowledgment of your talents, and if you feel awful at planning, you want to find a remedy to fix it (or as a side note, you are just a procrastinator killing time professionally by reading beautiful articles). 

 

In either case, dive in the read that can change your day.

 

By definition, balance equalizes different elements in the right proportions, which sounds like magic that can enrich your life immensely and instantly.  

 

Balance vs. Imbalance 

 

On average, we make over 30,000 choices per day – ranging from trivial things like which door to choose to enter the building to what reply to give at an important meeting. In fact, the more responsibility we have, the more we are involved in decision-making. 

 

If not properly handled, the never-ending decisions might result in imbalance, fatigue, and productivity drop. 

 

We suggest that reclaiming control over your life could start with checking on signs signaling work-life balance to be out of control. If stress indicators resonate, it means the best time to take action is today. 

How to Strike a Balance

 

In addition to the practical exercises you find below, we recommend specific tools that can bring solutions for perfect work-life balance and pave the way to harmonizing your life.  

 

Manage your goals 

When balance is a challenge, the first thing to do is to set a goal to  ‘re-calibrate’ time management strategy. 

 

Goal-setting removes blockages that we sometimes encounter when sticking to everyday repetitive routines. Besides, personal goals ignite motivation and define the direction we need to move to.   

Tip to achieve

Some find that the SMART approach to setting goals works well. 

 

It implies that the goals are: 

• Specific (squeeze one goal into one positive statement) 
• Measurable (decide what metrics will define your results) 
• Attainable (the realistic goal maintains inner motivation) 
• Relevant (ask yourself what changes in your life you expect with reaching this goal)  
• Time-driven (set the date you want to see the tangible results to create accountability). 

 

Start to regain work-life balance with tracking your goals

 

For achieving work-life balance it might sound like: “For two weeks from now on, I will find time to work and rest. Within 8 hours of my working day, I have all the right tools to perform all the necessary tasks. It will release energy I need to have quality time with my family and friends, exercise, and enjoy hobbies.”  

 

GoalsOnTrack for goal setting 

If you need a reliable tool to streamline your goals and habits, GoalsOnTrack is our top recommendation. It has a multi-optional dashboard that lets you succeed in handling goals and subgoals, task management, habit tracking, journaling for tracking your progress, and more, that will help you will stick to your plan and realize it.  

Manage your daily work routine 

With streamlined solutions, it is easier to manage it all because high productivity translates into stability and better life quality. 

 

Ideally, winning a day is the result of thorough planning, but in reality, there are too many distractions imposed by excessive amounts of communication. Disruptive work is the number one reason for a decrease in productivity.

Tip to achieve 

Among everyday business practices, managing email consumes a lion’s share of time. Updating and checking your inbox might cost you two hours per day of the time you could give to the tasks demanding your undivided attention. 

SaneBox for important email recognition 

SaneBox is an email manager that automatically sorts your mail and only shows you the important messages while filtering out the noise. It works with all major mail services and guarantees to keep your email account secure. In addition, it facilitates your workflow with reminders to follow up in case you miss an important email requiring your response.

The beauty of this tool is the ‘self-learning’ filter that adjusts to your email management needs.  

Manage your time 

Tracking time is a crucial part of any business, as it proves to be effective in terms of meeting deadlines and addressing time loss risks. 

 

Actually, a reliable time tracker works as a ‘guardian’ that helps you not to be frivolous with the most valuable resource we have at our disposal.  

Tip to achieve 

Opt for automatic time tracking. Taking a data-driven approach will give you a deeper understanding of time utilization. Smart tracking makes you: 

 

• See the border between work and life 
• Let time get calculated easily 
• Apply changes

 

When ‘armed’ with specific time data, we feel more confident about setting a boundary between work time and life to avoid overwork and re-think some habits. 

TMetric for accurate time tracking  

With accurate work time calculations, we get control over time and income. Feeling in control of your time brings balance to your life. 

 

Through the diverse reports available for time tracker users, we can get some insightful information on what exactly the time is spent on. It might be of great help for calculating your personal formula for enhanced productivity and maximized efficiency for ‘working smarter, not harder’.    

 

Manage your time off work 

Time off is as important as work time. A lack of time off can be poor for performance at work, as it is necessary to allocate some ‘do nothing’ time to process experience and information. 

 

People who never take time off live in a short-term focused regime.

In the long run, it badly affects vision on things requiring a strategic approach and creates imbalance. 

Tip to achieve

Following the break schedule will help you not to ignore activities that are aligning with maintaining healthy habits. For instance, some people believe that by skipping lunch they create time for more work. However, it turns out to be counterproductive in terms of health and well-being. Not observing break time may seem justifiable, but only from a short-term perspective.

TimeOut for taking breaks 

TimeOut is a tool that will help you take breaks. Features include announcing a break and marking break time postponements. By setting desired time breaks, you can manage your time in a more effective way. In addition, working in intervals is believed to prevent straining eyes, exhaustion, and stress.  

Manage your stress 

Stress is the major reason behind feeling out of balance. According to statistics,  workplace stress causes up to $300 billion yearly losses for companies. Aside from the financial aspect, stress provokes health conditions that might ruin mental balance.  

Tip to achieve 

To forewarn the increased stress and restore balance, there are lots of simple techniques that can be applied even without leaving your workspace. Deep breathing may be the first step to take. It sends your body a signal for slowing heart rate and feeling calmer.       

Pip for stress management

Aside from the practical exercises, applying tech solutions for stress management results in considerable stress reduction. Pip is a stress tracker app, which measures your stress level and collects the related information so that it is easy to spot the triggers provoking stressful conditions. It is a great assistant for staying in good mental shape and taking care of your well-being.

 

Final Thought   

 

Striking a work-life balance is much more than just avoiding occasional stress. 

Set it as an ongoing task with a high-priority goal. This will help you reach equally successful results at work and at home.  

 

Technology empowers us with the tools to increase business and personal productivity, as they help automate mundane tasks and assist in striking a work-life balance.

 

By applying software that brings solutions to everyday routines like goal setting, email management, and project tracking, we not only improve productivity but enhance our time management skills. These tenets are the basis of creating a purpose-driven perspective and establishing harmonious work-life relationships.