Finding a balance between work and home isn’t an easy task.

Some people have this gorgeous ability to walk out of work and leave the day behind, others don’t always have the same talent to achieve this.  They find themselves logging back in to work once dinner is finished or the kids have been put to bed and before they know it, they’ve completed an additional 5-6 hours of work during their own time.

Finding some type of balance is key for the sake of your family, but more importantly for yourself, but that is definitely easier said than done…or is it?

You may not even physically sit down and work, it might be that your mind is focused on work and you struggle to switch off, engage with your family and be present (this is just as impactful as physically working) There tend to be 2 key places where the pressure to work into the evening comes from.

1. Your boss/company
2. Yourself

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Let’s take a moment to begin considering the pressures from your boss or the company in general.

Many business leaders or bosses find themselves expecting the same from employees as they’re personally willing to put in. This is an unrealistic ask and not the most effective example of good leadership. But, we can’t actually fully blame them for this, unless we set expectations or manage realistic deadlines, they may not even know you’re finding that work is impacting your home life. We need to begin by gently managing these expectations. For example: when asked to complete a task very late on in the day, let them know that you’re more than happy to take on the task but you’ll have it back to them by lunchtime the following day, instead of getting the task completed that night. This will go some way to help to manage their expectations.

What I personally find very interesting is the pressure we CHOOSE to put on ourselves to work all hours under the sun (and moon). Either we have a deep belief that working long hard hours is what you need to do (this is usually a belief instilled from our parents/guardians behaviours), or we’ve fallen into a habit of comparing how ‘hard’ others work and we work harder to keep up. Firstly, working longer hours is not at all smart. In fact, there’s been a lot of research into the inefficient impact this has on our mind-set, motivation and effectiveness.

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We have a responsibility to ourselves to do what we can to reduce the pressure of always being ‘switched on’. We need to learn to give ourselves a break to enjoy our home life and also improve our mental well-being. So, what can we do?

1. Be as organised as possible, prioritised and manage your time as much as you can. Do the tasks you want to avoid doing first.
2. Turn off your phone and/or emails at home, or at least schedule a 2-3 hour time period where you do this. That might ease you in to fully switching off in the evenings.
3. Integrate mindfulness, meditation or breathing into your day. If possible morning and night is ideal, even if only for a few minutes at a time.
4. If you have a commute, use this time to create distance between home and work…take this opportunity to do something for you. Listen to a podcast, read a book and catch up with a friend.
5. Have a morning routine that you’ll stick to, my morning routine starts the night before by preparing my outfits for the following day. I find this removes unnecessary decisions first thing in the morning.
6. Allow time to exercise!!
7. Read…anything and everything…escape through words
8. Don’t compare yourself to others…they are on their own journey and what you see on social media isn’t reality, it’s a filtered version of events. This is similar to what people share at work, they show what they’re doing well, but are likely to hide what’s not gone well.

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Gaining the right balance between work and home can only be achieved by you, don’t rely on anyone else to sort it out for you. Take control of your happiness and destiny.

Love, Nicole.