12 Proven Ways to Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance Even When You are Too Busy

Proven Ways to Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance Even When You're Too Busy


What is the Meaning of Work-Life Balance?

Work-life balance is a professional term that describes the process of creating a symmetric schedule that favors both your work and other aspects of your life such as your family and relationships.

The aim of work-life balance is to ensure that people do not commit so much to their works in a manner that makes them lose their personal lives or forget about other things that matter to them.

It is widely believed that a fulfilled life can only be possible when there is a healthy work-life balance because achievement is not all about financial and professional accomplishments but also one's social impacts and self-fulfillment.

It is challenging to achieve a healthy work-social-personal life balance, especially for professionals, businessmen, startups and career-minded persons. But the fact is that it is not supposed to be so. Life is better when we create a good balance both in our careers, relationships, lifestyles and what have you.

If what you are dedicating your time to begins to make you feel like you are missing out other vital things in life, then it is time to look forward toward creating a healthy work-life balance. Failure to act fast may lead you to losing things that are more important than whatever keeps you so busy.

It may sound simple or that you lose nothing living your life anyhow you want it, but as time progresses, you may find yourself realizing that you made life mistakes while trying to do your best.

Most of the things you prioritize now will fade away in few years' times, even things that remain will not matter to you again. Failure to realize this had made many live a life of regret at old age. Therefore, it pays to look inward and ask yourself questions like: What really matters? What is left out? These simple questions will help you live and end better.


Why You Need to Balance Work with Other Areas of Your Life

"Work-life balance is not about fitting in more, but about creating space for what matters most."
C. Hassler
  • Unhealthy work-life balance can destroy your relationships:

Your family, friends and loved ones need a piece of your time. Being too busy to the point of not connecting with them in a healthy manner can destroy your relationship, marriage and shatter your family connectivity. So, while being busy, it is important to think about how to balance it with your relationship life.

  • Being too busy can lead to stress:

Letting what you are doing make you too busy can result in stress which can place your health in danger and make you worn out.

Breaking down while you are busy towards meeting a certain goal would only render all your effort in vain. Therefore, a healthy and balanced life will help you cope with stress and prevent anxiety associated with work and social pressures.

  • Lack of work-life balance can destroy your personal life:

In situation whereby you are too busy to the point of forgetting to take care of yourself, your health and your well-being, then you are leading your life to deterioration.

While engaging so heavily on your tasks, it is crucial to still think about how to achieve a healthy balance between your work, and your life, health and well-being.

  • No work-life balance can make you lose vital things in life:

While work and money matters so much, they are just a few of the most important things in life. Most people that dedicate their entire lives to these two only often end up wishing the considered other aspects of their lives.

In fact, a healthy and fulfilled life involves balancing your financial and professional success with success in your personal affairs like family, relationship, personal well-being, and more.


"Working in a manner that favors both the workplace expectations as well as one's personal life should be a priority for everyone who wants to live well. You cannot talk about productivity without considering this subject because lack of healthy balance between work and other aspects of life can lead to excessive stress, anxiety, and pressure which in turn reduce productivity and effectiveness of the human resources. This article offers you tips on how you can still balance your life even when you have a busy schedule at work."


How you can achieve a healthy work-life balance as a busy person


Coworkers in an office

1. List Your Priorities and jot them down:

Take a piece of paper and list out what matters to you beside that work or business that makes you so busy.

By listing and identifying your priorities, you are already creating a self-awareness that there is something more to do aside from the ones already before you. This self-awareness will fume up a balancing emotion and probably diversify your mind towards thinking about how to achieve a healthy work-life balance.


2. Set accomplishable goals for yourself

From your list of priorities or scale of preference, set targets for each of the item and figure out how you want to balance them up in a healthy manner that would not hinder you from doing the other things that are important.

Goals are compasses of life which help direct your path as you begin the journey. By setting goals, you already know your aim in each step you take.


3. Apply time management procedures in your planning:

Time management procedure in planning

Effective time management can make it easy to meet up your goals. One good thing about time management is that it helps in multi-tasking. Effective time management will help you balance up your life and minimize your busy lifestyle.

If you don’t find out ways to manage your time properly, you’ll realize that you are feeling busy and anxious even when you are not doing anything. The tension alone is not good to your health.

Therefore, draw a time board to schedule when you want to work, when you want to hang out with friends, when you must be with your family or offer your spouse 100% of your time. This time schedules will enable you stick to your tasks while still balancing up other aspects of your life in a healthy manner.


4. Fight hard against procrastination:

Often times we forget that we are supposed to checkup on friends or call people that matter to us, but this is not always the case. There are moments we keep having this in mind, but procrastination keeps us postponing those plans.

Once you can beat procrastination, you will be able to keep to the time you planned to make that call, organized that family meeting and doing the other things that matter.

"Procrastination cuts short the time we have thereby making us too busy with the limited time that is left." - Abas Obot


5. Treat everything or everyone that matters to you as important:

The truth is that no one is too busy to do what matters when it matters. We only bet our times on what we feel is important to us over the other. Likewise, we create time for those that we feel are more urgently crucial to us.

Not that those we don’t give our time are not important, but it might be due to our judgmental conclusions or viewpoint. “He/she will understand that I am busy”, “I will do it when I am fully ready to do it better”, etc., can alter a lot of plans and prevent us from keeping a balance between our busy lives and other aspects of us.

A lot of children have stayed for months even close to a year without reaching out to their aged parents. Such may be due to over confidence that those parents would always be available when needed, not knowing that time flies. No, 'everything that needs to be done' and 'everyone that needs to be attended to' are important.

In order to achieve a healthy work-life balance, it makes sense that we treat everything we have to do as important, in accordance with our scale of preference.


6. Avoid any form of distractions:

Nothing alters your plan and disrupt your target goals as distractions. Distraction consumes that time you would have used doing something important to balance your work and life. Allowing distractions to change your schedule is an unhealthy habit.

"Distraction is listed as one of the major setbacks in productivity and time management plan."

Phone distraction while at work

Distractions may not necessarily be things that don't matter, even important things can be distractions if they come at the wrong time; for instance, when you are supposed to finish a certain thing. It is not bad to tell a friend, "I'll call you later", and leaving social media until you are done with the task at hand.

When you finish the work at hand, you would be able to do the next thing and there you go. But if you touch different things without finishing one, you probably will consume your whole time doing nothing tangible thereby not achieving your target goals.


7. Try doing different things at a time:

When we discussed about distractions in the previous paragraph, you might have thought that we avoided you from doing different things at a time. No, multi-tasking makes things much easier.

For instance, if your work takes a whole day, there is nothing wrong in using your break time to reach out to your friends and family through phone calls or messages. This will help you complete different tasks (of relaxing and building relationships) at a time. This is what multitasking is all about in the case of work-life balance.


8. Schedule a lonely time for yourself:

No matter how busy you are, it is healthy to always find time for yourself. This is not about others or building a relationship; it is about you. Sit out somewhere and think about yourself and how to better your life.

What if you lose your job? What if what you are dedicating your time to doesn't work out? These will help you adjust your priorities and try other options on your list as if they were important as well.

Set plans about next step in life and remember to relax as well. Every time should not be "work", "people" and "pressure". Sometimes, you have to take a break and give yourself a nice treatment to balance your life.


9. Take Leave from Work once in a while:

Any job or task that does not offer you a period of leave and vacation is not a good job, and you are not supposed to do such work for too long. Beside short breaks and being at home with your friends and family only in the evening and holidays, you need a longer time with them. Having time for your family is one of the best ways to enhance a happy family life.

You need to spend weeks staying with them and going out with them. When you don't have time for your family, for instance, you are making yourself a stranger to your household which have negative impact in the future. This is common among fathers who in the end realize that they are strangers in their homes.

Regardless of what you provide at home to your family, friends or loved ones, if you do not create a time for them, you will lose your place in their hearts. Intimacy is about physical closeness not about care or provision, and that is what people around you need.


10. Build a Strong and Healthy Relationships with friends and family:

One of the greatest treasures in life is having a rich circle of good friends and family. 

When you build a strong and healthy relationships, they would be people to motivate you into having a more in-depth view about life and people that you will want to always spend time with. This will enable you to think beyond the task at hand thereby creating a balance between your work and other aspects of life.

Friends laughing at each other

Most people that dedicate too much time into busy working lives are those who feel no one cares about them, or that the only value they have is by working to bring money to their families or make fame to attract friends.

"The truth is that connections and relationship matter more than money."

The rich know this, and they prioritize this over other things and that is how they enjoy their lives. One of the habits of highly successful people is that they invest more in relationships. You too can learn to build a happy and healthy relationship that can make life worth living beyond material achievements.


11. Build Connections at Your Workplace:

If you spend most of your times at workplace, it makes sense for you to build strong connections with your coworkers. Your colleague at work can become a great friend to plan a vacation or engage in meaningful discussion with.

Creating time to connect with the people at your workplace is a proven way to achieve a healthy work-life balance. By creating a good relationship with them, you are equally building a relationship that help balance your life even at work.


12. Take control of your life by being your own boss:

Most times it can be uneasy to meet personal schedules due to the nature of our jobs. In situation whereby your work is too tight and denies you a space to focus on your personal life, you may need a switch because such work is not healthy for you and people around you.

One of the proven ways to achieve a healthy work-life balance is by taking control of your life and becoming your own boss. This can be done by establishing yourself and being your own employer. When you build your own kingdom, it will be easier for you to manage your entire life including work as well as achieving your goals.

Even if you are still an employee, you can be your own boss by outsourcing some of your tasks, maybe having a personal assistant.

Modern tools like artificial intelligence can also help ease your job and give you more time to plan better. For instance, a piece of writing that would take you hours to create can be generated with just an AI or written by freelance experts at your comfort. With this you can achieve other things without bothering about time.

An entrepreneur reading alone

In conclusion: Life is not all about work or being busy. You have different aspects of life including your family, relationships, work, personal life and social life. It is when you are able to achieve a healthy balance between every aspect of your life that you can feel truly fulfilled in the end. This article offers you the best and proven tips to help you balance your work and your life amicably without missing out. I hope this helps.

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