Feeling perpetually tired and overwhelmed? You may need to reclaim your work-life balance.
I’ve been there. My day-to-day felt like a life-sized game of whack-a-mole. I was reacting as things arose, addressing them mostly on auto-pilot because I didn’t have the bandwidth to do anything more. I needed a rest! So I felt this constant pressure to maximize my time spent working in hopes that I could eventually catch up and get one. I didn’t – the work just kept expanding until there was simply no room left for me.
I needed to reclaim my work-life balance.
So I did!
I did it by making various tweaks and changes to my daily life, sure. But the real catalyst to all that change – the way to figure out which tweaks were needed – was a basic perspective shift which I’ll share in this post.
[Writer’s Note: this post has shifted focus to the 3 factors you need to incorporate in your day-to-day life to feel balanced. Here’s the post with 6 introspective steps to work-life balance!]
Finding a work-life balance that works for you
My philosophy on work-life balance: It’s not about your working hours, your schedule, or even the length of your to-do list. It’s about managing your feeling of balance on a day-to-day basis.
How?
I play with three main ingredients: autonomy, accomplishment, and authenticity.
To feel balanced, you need all three. If one is lacking in your day job, you’ll want to cultivate it outside of work.
But first… Why does work-life balance matter?
We want to feel good.
We want a sense of calm control.
We want to make space in our lives for the things that are most important to us.
We want to have a meaningful connection with whatever it is that we’re doing.
Whether it’s our work or play or time spent with loved ones, we want to be present. We simply can’t show up fully as ourselves (or for ourselves) when we’re out of balance. Maintaining your work-life balance is like putting your own oxygen mask on first before helping others.
To put the enjoyment back in your work life
Overwhelm and exhaustion start to build when you’re out of balance. In order to “catch up” (and catch a break) at work, we tend to want to grind through more hours. But this just creates more imbalance, and we run the risk of burning out!
So we want to “work smarter, not harder”. The trouble is at some point, you simply don’t have the bandwidth for “smarter”!
Say you continue overworking instead. As you do, the quality and efficiency of your work naturally declines. I know not all of us love our jobs, but I think most of us enjoy doing good work!
It’s not just the work you’re able to get done that suffers, either. It’s the whole experience.
When I’m in balance, I can easily create a top-10 list of things I enjoy about my job.
When I’m out of balance though, a kind of “survival mode” kicks in. Anything “extra” that was once enjoyable becomes unimportant and unremarkable. I’m talking about the chats with your work friends, the cool out-of-the-box project your boss entrusted you with, or even that first sip of coffee in the morning (which has become more a lifeline than a perk).
The enjoyment factor fades until you’re left with only the grind.
Meanwhile, anything irksome is emphasized. Things seem to start making your job needlessly more difficult. Your tolerance is also much lower than it would be if you were feeling in balance.
If you lack balance, you’re probably also lacking some sort of fulfillment elsewhere in your life. The trouble is that you can start to make your work life responsible for your general sense of fulfilment. I’ve been there! Without another outlet, all of my creative hopes, dreams and aspirations tend to get funneled into my career, and not always in a good way. (I wrote this post some time ago about what happens without a proper outlet for all that creative energy!)
Much like it’s not always fair to demand your creativity fund your living, I don’t think it’s fair to make your 9-to-5 entirely responsible for your overall sense of purpose and fulfillment. Unless you’re working your dream job, of course!
To help your day-to-day feel more manageable and fulfilling
An obvious impact of a lack of balance is a lack of time. (Particularly when your imbalance is due to an increase in your working hours.)
Another is the inability to rest when it’s time to rest.
Doom-scrolling, for example, thrives on exhaustion and overwhelm. It’s an unconscious act of silent rebellion that feels like a reclamation of your time. It’s really just an easy distraction that ruins your sleep hygiene. It also opens the door to ruminate! Going for a scroll and other distractions leave you with less time to actively process the day. (Disclaimer: not a psychologist!)
Then there are the mundane tasks that make up your day-to-day life. Normally these are a non-issue. Except now they are keeping you from your rest time (or your personal projects or your exercise routine). Suddenly the innocuous pile of laundry ready to be folded is a ploy to ruin you, and your mind starts protesting before you’ve so much as grabbed a single sock.
Okay, forget the laundry – it’s hard to be present with your loved ones when you’re feeling stretched.
It’s harder still to indulge in a creative pursuit or other activities that soothe the soul or help you feel grounded.
We want work-life balance so that our personal lives feel fulfilling and meaningful, not just “work” in a different environment.
Although we’re focusing on too much “work” and not enough “life”, imbalance works the other way as well. Some of us will feel imbalanced if we don’t have a consistent place to go to be part of a team working towards a common goal, somewhere to socialize, somewhere to perform and to feel appreciated, somewhere that allows for a focused and structured day, and so-on.
This can have much to do with the type of rest that we’re getting as well. For more on this: The Creative’s Guide to Rest; 7 Ways to Restore Your Energy
What is work-life balance, anyway?
I think we all struggle with what “work-life balance” really is. There’s no consensus, and very few of us manage to feel in balance anyways. So it must be a myth.
(I heartily disagree, by the way – more on this in the aptly named post: Work-Life Balance Does Exist (Just Not How You Think).)
This is the perspective shift I needed to get back in balance: I had to redefine what balance really is.
I started defining work-life balance by feeling.
That’s it.
Not by a mathematical formula, not by a pie chart, and not by my ability to maintain the same “balanced” day every day, five days per week.
We get preoccupied with charts and figures and percentages and habit trackers. We want to quantify and measure our degree of work-life balance to see if we “have it” or not. But it’s much simpler than all that!
To be in balance is to have the feeling of a bit of ease and a bit of harmony met by a bit of manageable challenge and supported, growth-inducing frustration.
It’s the feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction.
The feeling of a bit of calm met by a bit of action.
It’s the feeling of care and of being well-rested most of the time, and the feeling of calm confidence in caring for others as well.
It’s the freedom of experiencing little sprinkles of joy and maybe having a bit of a cry, but all of it in balance, all of it manageable, and all of it having just enough space in your life.
Simple. Not easy.
(Which I acknowledge is ironic for something that is supposed to leave you with a general sense of… ease.)
The 3 key pillars of work-life balance
Forget the hours.
To find balance, start by feeling out these three areas of your daily life, at work and outside of work:
- Autonomy. Do you feel in control of your actions and decisions? Or can you actively participate in decisions that lead to collective actions? Then you’ve got a degree of autonomy, as compared to “doing as you’re told” or being made to feel that you’re without choice.
- Accomplishment. Do you get a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction from doing something meaningful to you? Can you find meaning in what you do? Then you’ve got a degree of accomplishment, as compared to constantly working toward someone else’s goals all the time, feeling like you’re “standing still”, or feeling as though what you do doesn’t matter.
- Authenticity. Can you go about your day without hiding who you are and what you really care about? Do you have self-knowledge, self-respect, and healthy boundaries? Then you’ve got a degree of authenticity, as compared to feeling like you’re putting on a show, or pretending to be someone you’re not all the time.
I believe these three have the most impact on your sense of work-life balance. (If you have others, I would love to know – please drop them in the comments below!)
Ideally, you’ll have a satisfying combination of these between your working hours and non-working hours.
If you have less of one at work, you might feel more balanced if you can cultivate more of it outside of work, and vice versa:
- If you get very little autonomy at work, you’ll want to take full charge of a personal project outside of work.
- If you don’t connect to your work in a meaningful way, do something that does mean something to you in your downtime.
- If you must provide service with a smile all day at work, then you’ll probably want to have an outlet for all your other more authentic feelings after work.
If you feel like you need to add more of these, don’t be afraid to engage in a meaningful hobby. Yup, even if you’re busy! Sometimes it’s not about the hours. (For further reading, check out Want to Overcome Overwhelm? Your Hobby is the Key!)
And if you’ve already found autonomy, accomplishment, and authenticity at work, then you’ve likely found a well-aligned career. That alignment will help you feel balanced, even while working many hours!
Work-life balance is different for every person and every circumstance. As an example, a common work-life balance tip is to “shut it down at 5pm”. Some people need to hear this to find balance. For others, having to shut down at 5pm no matter what would induce panic! They want to complete their work their way, on their terms, and the ability to work a bit extra will help them feel more balanced.
Hold on, how do I figure out what mix is right for me to feel in balance!?
I’m so glad you asked. While there’s no “6 easy steps to achieve work-life balance”, I can absolutely offer you 6 moderately challenging steps to find what it feels like to you!
Your turn: What does work-life balance look like for you? Drop a comment below and let’s start a conversation!
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