How to Balance Career and Family

Separate work and leisure activities. In the age of online research and communication, you can sit at home and get everything done. Going to school or working remotely gives you even more time flexibility. However, the downside of this convenience is that work or school can interfere with daily life and/or family activities. You will find it difficult to focus on a problem when you can work whenever you like. Moreover, if you don’t organize your household chores as well as professional work, it will be difficult for you to transition from work to home. ^[1] To solve this problem, you need to prepare yourself a separate work area.

• If you work or study online, you can complete tasks at a library, coffee shop, or hybrid community for students or internet workers. When you’re done, you can leave the environment and move on to your private life.
• If you have to work from home, you should arrange your own desk. You can equip a home office, or a corner at the kitchen table. There’s no need to stress over working from anywhere from time to time.
• If you work at work, you should find a way to transition from a corporate environment to a private one at the end of the workday. For example, you can sit at your desk listening to music or an audiobook, do a quick exercise, or chat with friends.

Priority setting. To have an effective work-life balance, you need to prioritize your tasks. That way, when there’s an emergency, you’ll know what’s important to you.

• Make a list of the important things in life. You can write down areas like family, romantic relationships, work, and spirituality. Alternatively, you could list volunteering, physical activity, maintaining social networks, or other passions.
• Review the list and rank items by importance, starting with #1 being most important, #2 being second most important, and so on. Ratings are meant to set priorities so you can work hard to fit the important items into your daily and weekly schedule. ^[2]

Make a schedule and try to stick to it. If a week goes by and you don’t know which tasks need to be completed on which day, you should take a week to record your activities. ^{[3] [4]} After a week, you will clearly delineate work/study and family life or errands in your schedule.

• You can schedule a weekly schedule that includes ongoing activities such as work, school and social activities, and other one-time events. Before making a daily to-do list in the evening, you need to complete all of your priority tasks. ^[5]
• For your daily schedule, you should mark the 3 most important items to do during the day (besides work or school activities). ^[6] These items can be for presentations or personal activities such as going to the dentist or attending a girl’s dance performance.
• You can make two separate lists if one is a bit tight – one with 3 important things at school/work and the other with 3 important things for family activities. Just completing 3 to 6 tasks a day, your operational productivity will improve significantly.

Resolve procrastination. ^[7] Procrastination is a cause of imbalance. Work and life will be turned upside down because you often extend the time to complete the work. This causes you to work late, or be distracted while working by personal factors.

• One way to deal with procrastination is to write down why you are applying for admission or pursuing a career path. For example, if you want to help people, you can get work done with the real intention that they are helping you achieve your goal. Keep this list at work when you feel mentally unmotivated.
• Another method of dealing with procrastination is to split the workload. This helps you feel less pressured and more motivated for completing small items.

Eliminate distractions. You will find that your time and productivity are being affected by too many distractions. Research estimates that most people spend 20 minutes every hour dealing with distractions that arise unexpectedly. Therefore, you will spend two hours a day just trying to focus after being distracted. ^[8] If you can limit distractions at work, you will prevent them from affecting your private life. You can follow the following advice to eliminate distractions: ^[9]

• Focus on the important work instead of the urgent. Urgent work is only reactive, while important tasks are proactive
• Turn off phone or computer notifications
• Keeping the workplace clean and tidy
• Put your phone away
• Close unused programs
• Drink water, snack, or go to the bathroom during breaks to limit disruptive activity.

Develop creativity. No matter how much you try, sometimes one of these “worlds” (the world of your career or life) will demand a lot from you. You should learn to be creative and figure out how to prioritize urgent needs while continuing to meet the needs of other activities.

• For example, maybe you have to work overtime every week and don’t have time for your other half. To compensate for the affection, you can prepare a candlelit dinner or watch a movie together on the sofa in the evening. These activities do not take much time and help the two become more connected.
• You can skip big projects or share time with other co-workers to reduce your workload to spend more time with your relationships and family. If you can’t reduce your working time, you can plan to go for a walk in the park with your family or take your loved one to the office campus during your lunch break.