As Winter hits, more and more families are spending less quality time and losing the work-life balance… Getting up for work before the sun, getting home well after the last light, going to bed and doing it all again – sound familiar? It can be so easy to get into a routine of monotony, which seems harmless until it all of a sudden isn’t. Glenhaven understands first-hand, the importance of developing healthy habits around daily routines, so the valuable parts of your day don’t get missed. We’ve gathered a few pointers, so you can audit your daily schedule and fit in the things (and importantly, people) you love most.
1. Prioritise Your Schedule
This probably sounds really obvious, and exactly what everyone tries to do anyway, but when trying to become more aware of their schedules and where to dedicate time, people often focus on the wrong thing. By prioritising your tasks, you may not always get everything done that you planned to, but the most important things will be accounted for. Creating a weekly schedule that includes clear deadlines and timeframes ensures that you have the time to dedicate to more valuable aspects of life.
Using a digital calendar with automatic reminders and repeating tasks is a great time saver, and will keep you on task for a set period of time. Be sure to add family time, housework, and most importantly, downtime, into your calendar so you don’t skip it.
2. Embrace Flexible Work Arrangements
COVID came with a lot of challenges, pushing all of us to stretch further than we thought we could, but it also forced employers to become more flexible. More and more people are opting to work from home, or vary their hours to better suit their lifestyle. This is because, through COVID, most jobs proved that this is doable and even more efficient. Being able to get up and start the dishwasher, throw some veggies into a pot for soup, start the washing machine, or take the dog for a walk during lunch opens up your time outside of work hours to dedicate more valuable things to.
3. Plan Family Activities
Intentionally planning activities and setting the time aside for this is the perfect way to keep a healthy work/life balance. Using the tip from earlier, putting scheduled family time into the calendar as a recurring weekly task ensures that the time will be dedicated to quality time (an added benefit of this is a massive reduction in stress from last-minute planning – nobody likes going back and forth with the question, ‘what do you want to do?’). Once a month could be attending the cinema, going bowling, a MasterChef night and a road trip – if these were spread out to one activity every week, and repeated each month, your planning would be done for the next year!
4. Set Boundaries
A less fun, but equally important tip, is to create clear boundaries between work and family time. If you’re able to create a more flexible schedule with work, that’s fantastic, but don’t fall into the trap of ‘just working when it’s needed’ – next thing you’ll find, you’re checking emails at midnight, finalising that report for your colleague. Try to set times and environments that encourage focus on ONE thing – whether that be setting up an office space, putting your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ for a set time each day, or communicating with your colleagues that you are unavailable after a certain time, put clear, unwavering boundaries in place to protect your work and family life.
5. Involve the Family in Holiday Preparations
A little throw-in here: when planning for a birthday, event, dinner or holiday, instead of allowing the preparation to take away from your family time, involve them! Send the kids and a parent off to the supermarket, get someone to wrap the present, bake and decorate the cake together – make it a team effort.
6. Practice Self-Care
As important as balancing work/family life is, it’s even more important to dedicate time to yourself – if you’re burnt out and unable to look after yourself, all other areas of your life will suffer. As Winter rolls in, the shorter days and colder weather affect your mood and energy levels, so develop a low-maintenance, stable habit that will keep you feeling refreshed, healthy and relaxed, so other aspects of your life don’t feel the strain either. You can take as much time with your family as you want, but if you’re in a bad mood, they won’t love it for very long and neither will you!
A last few tips to keep under your belt include; limiting screen time – create a schedule around this, too – it can be so easy to be in the same room as loved ones and not be present at all. Spending quality time is an intentional action, so don’t let the screen dictate this. Stay organised, using lists, delegation and deadlines. This limits stress and last-minute ‘staying back to work’, eating into your valuable time. Finally, communicate openly. If your colleagues don’t know you’re no longer available out of hours, they will continue contacting you. If your family doesn’t know you want intentional quality time without screens, they will continue to sit on their phones in silence.
Remember, work is important, but all the money in the world won’t buy back the family time you sacrifice. Know your priorities, communicate them, and understand that you are deserving of the family and work life you want.
