Achieve Work-Life Balance: 10 Ways to Get Back Some ‘You’ Time

Short answer: You can’t achieve work-life balance if you check emails and work notifications during your non-work time.

All right, let’s dig into the concept and achievement of work-life balance. Along the way we’ll figure out if you personally can achieve work-life balance and how.

We’ll start with a tedious but necessary exercise.

Count up the hours you spend on work and job-related tasks.

That means getting ready for work, commuting, your work day, and any time you spend checking emails, worrying about work or otherwise engaging with it during the time you are not officially working. Got it?

If you spend more than 56 hours a week on work and job-related tasks then you are out of balance. You really need to do this check over the course of a month, though, not a single week, as a single week out of balance can be compensated for by another week that’s a bit less intense. But if you’re spending more than 56 hours hours a week getting ready, commuting, bringing work home, etc. – then you’re out of balance.

If you’re not spending more than 56 hours a week on work and job-related tasks, you are not necessarily out of balance. But you might be.

That’s because there are two different concepts in work-life balance. One of them is literal time you spend on work. Now I’m not saying that if you spend 60 hours a week working that if you have to stop. I am saying that your life is out of balance. If you spend 60 hours a week working, commuting, and doing job-related tasks off-hours, your job is eating up more of your literal time than is balanced.

If you’re like I used to be, working about 50 hours a week and spending more than 7 hours a week commuting – then you’re out of balance. It’s up to you if you want to get into balance, but right now, you are out of balance.

The other concept in work-life balance is harmony. Harmony as in not hating your work and not hating your life. If you are hating these things, you are not in balance. Harmony means not being at war with yourself over the choices you are making. As in – being conflicted about neglecting your family when you’re working and conflicted about neglecting your work when you’re not working. Harmony means doing one or the other and not feeling guilty about not doing both at the same time.

Inching your way back toward work-life balance.

Let’s say that your life consists of the following routine during a 5-day work week: get ready for work, commute, work 9 hours, commute back, work out, make dinner, do dishes, go to bed. And you hate it. You feel like your job takes too much out of you. You are out of balance.

You are out of balance time-wise, because in your case, your day is about 11 and a half hours long. You start getting ready for work at about 7:30 a.m. to get to work at 9 and you get home at about 7 p.m. That’s a typical day for you. And with that schedule you’ve just edged over the 56 hour rule and you’re feeling it.

So you’re out of balance and feeling the hate. What do you do?

Well, we don’t know what you’ll actually do but here are 10 things you could do, if you choose. I learned about each of these the hard way – by not doing them. Achieving work-life balance requires effort these days, because society as a whole is rigged against it. This started happening in the 90s when the internet and cell phone technology were exciting and new – and they started gradually expanding work and the workday to unbalanced levels. Back in the 80s, you literally couldn’t check your work emails during your off hours without a lot of effort. So people didn’t. Nowadays – well, you know the drill.

The suggestions below are not necessarily easy to implement. If they had been, I would have done them a lot earlier. So be aware that some of them may seem unrealistic at first. Achieving work-life balance requires making work-life balance a priority and rejiggering your lifestyle to make it happen.

Okay – with no further ado – 10 ways to wrestle back some work-life balance:

1. Get you some remote time. Yeah, get yourself at least 1 day a week you don’t get ready for work and commute into the office. That right there will scooch you back under the 56 hour rule and you’ll feel better. You really will.
2. Stop working 9 hours a day. There are many jobs where there is always something that needs to get done – but not necessarily right now. Put stuff off and clock out. Do it later. Some of it you will never do. And that will be fine. But stop working 9 hours a day. Just stop it.
3. Ride your bike to work so you don’t have to work out. Seriously. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone. You will find that you will hate things less if you combine your exercise time and your commuting time in some way.
4. Go for a 4-day work week. If you can’t do your job remotely at least 1 day a week, then opt for a 4/10 work schedule (4 days a week, 10 hours a day). That will serve the same purpose of cutting out a day’s worth of getting ready and commuting. For many people that extra Friday off is a game changer in terms of work-life balance.
5. Take time off. Yeah, I know, it’s hard. Do it anyway. Take time off to not work. Take a vacation. Do something during your normal working hours that involves not working.
6. Don’t think about work when you’re not working. Don’t try to figure out your work problems when you’re not working. Don’t check your emails or take phone calls, etc. When you’re not working, you’re not working. This practice takes mental discipline for some people, but it is a mental discipline worth cultivating. Put your work literally, physically, out of sight when you’re not on the clock. That includes your laptop, your work phone, etc. Once these things are no longer in your eyeline – practice out of sight, out of mind.
7. Automate your meals. For some reason, deciding what to eat is exhausting for many people. So don’t do it at the end of your 11 1/2 hour day. Instead, automate your meals in some way. If you want to continue to cook your own meals, that’s great. It can be a meditative time, cooking your own food. But make your menu up in advance each week or even month. Pick like 7 dinner recipes and rotate them so that you always know what you’ll have on Monday, Tuesday, etc. You’ll be surprised at how much less stressful your life is when you eliminate that 1 daily decision from your to-do list.
8. Learn stuff – skills and knowledge. It may seem strange, but for many human brains, learning something is refreshing and energizing. Learning acts as an antagonist to the draining effect of doing the same thing over and over again in your job with never-ending stresses and a limiting routine. Learning decreases the hating your job factor and increases life satisfaction. It may be that the only time you have to devote to learning is on the job itself – but that’s okay. Learn new skills and information on your job and you’ll feel less constricted.
9. Get a partner. A life partner is good. But even just a lunch partner or ‘work girlfriend.’ Spending an hour a day at lunch just hanging with someone you like to hang with, gossiping, bitching, conferring, confiding, getting things off your chest – this does wonders for increasing the harmony in your life and decreasing the hatred. A social lunch breaks up the day and takes you out of work mode. It’s important. Any kind of partner that you can share your thoughts and burdens and inside jokes with will lighten your load.
10. Make your own hours. Work non-standard hours. Work from 11 to 7 to minimize your commute time. Or from 7:30 to 4:00 for similar reasons. Work a short day and then a couple of hours in the evening. Do what you need to do in terms of working non-standard hours to reduce the total number of hours spent on work during a week to below the 56 hour rule. Don’t work non-standard hours so that you can squeeze more work in. If you’re working more than 50 hours a week, working non-standard hours probably isn’t going to help you. But if working non-standard hours reduce commute or prep time – or even if reduces your fatigue significantly – it can be a real game changer.

All right – a lot of these things take effort to do and none of them is a panacea. But any one of them can be the game changer that tips you from hatred and inner conflict toward greater harmony and being a little less pretty fed up. Good luck!