How to Improve Work-Life Balance in 5 Steps

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Work and life oppose each other like two positive sides of a magnet repelling each other. No matter whether you are a stay-at-home parent, start-up entrepreneur, small business owner, executive leader, individual contributor at a company, or part of a large corporation, your work bleeds into your life outside of work.

Q: I’m not satisfied with my work-life balance. Is there a way to be more balanced?

A: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Your work life and personal life are different. Your priorities, desires, skills, and talents will influence how much you accomplish in both. To learn more about the effects of your unique work habits, take a look at your commute. Are you taking time for yourself, and your family or being pushed to be productive at work creating an environment where your job is creating or stomping on your life?

Your work life will impact how well you work with others and how you approach tasks. The priority to improve work-life balance is critical to your success. Without it, you are likely working for a job that limits your time and/or productivity in work-life priorities.

Here are five ways to improve your work-life balance:

1. Stop Multitasking. Start High-Speed Switching.

The word “multitasking” seems to bring out a negative image in our minds, but it’s a powerful tool that allows us to increase our productivity. When you’re able to focus on one task at a time, you’re able to complete more tasks in a shorter amount of time, and you’ll feel happier and more productive.

The science of systems and software research shows that increasing productivity by one task at-a-time can increase productivity by 50 percent. The more you do something, the more likely you’ll be able to finish it and be effective.

I would also recommend you leverage lean applied practices to business along with reading/implementing “Getting Things Done” or “GTD” practices from David Allen’s book and practice to help you align your work and personal tasks. This will allow you to capture and execute the proper action tasks to do next. I have found optimizing this type of prioritization drives greater high-speed switching from task to task, getting more completed, and vastly improves my time management skills because I am working on the right things.

2. Mix in exercise or take a break.

It’s important to take a deep breath (no, I mean mix in breathing exercises), meditate, step away from your computer and get a good night’s sleep. Working from 9 to 5 every day is not helping your mental health.

While I start the day with an early 1.5 to 2-hour workout every day, make sure you are doing some form of exercise. I still find it critical in high-stress work environments to blow off steam. So take a moment to go to the gym, take a walk outside, do some deep breathing, or go for a jog. This will help you relax and get ready to work the rest of the day or the next day.

It might be a while before you’re able to focus on your work, but taking a moment to relax and refresh yourself can help you be productive. However, if you are looking to escape during exercise fully, I recommend maximizing your time by putting solid podcasts or audiobooks on your earbuds. Personally, I knock out 8-10 podcasts and an audiobook a week while working out. This is a great practice for commuting too. I mean, you remember when we used to drive our vehicles into an office. Right?

3. Make sure you’re doing things that are in alignment with your values and priorities.

In the book “Getting Things Done,” the author does a great job of outlining how both work and life actions create a mental white noise of confusion keeping you from a highly productive fulfilled life. To further align you need to understand our lives are made up of a series of prioritized activities that we do for a living. Some of the activities we do in our lives include:

The 3 F’s- Faith, Family, and Fitness
Worship
Intimacy
Hobbies
Side hustle, Bank account, or Retirement
Travel
Planning or Decision-making
Your Job or Compensation

You’re probably not going to get everything you want when you have a job that demands the bulk of your time. That’s why it’s important to take time to align your personal and professional lives. If you’re able to take a moment to reassess your personal values, you’ll be able to balance your work and your personal life better.

4. Make sure you’re doing things that are in alignment with your values and priorities.

The next piece is a reminder that it’s important to fully understand what your job is trying to achieve and what your values are. You may be working hard to please your employer, but you may or may not be doing things that are in alignment with your values.

Be sure to explore your values and understand what your job is trying to achieve fully. If you find that you’re working hard to please your employer, but your values are in conflict with your job, you’ll need to take a step back and rethink your job and values. Take a similar approach to your prioritized activities. Assure your work schedule is optimized to allow you the appropriate time to do the things that make you happy outside of work.

Your values are something you should be able to work out if you’re a professional or if you’re not.

5. If there is no time there is NO success

This is true for the work and life side of this equation. Pliably Dynamic people who are successful at both establish solid habit cadence. This assures they are crushing the job results while maximizing time on their values and prioritizing life activities.

My favorite example of this is one of the best people and leaders I worked for was a work-life juggernaut. This region vice president’s meeting schedule was more like a speed-dating event, broken down in 30-minute increments. He set the expectation and would end the meetings crisp at 30. Why do you ask? Because he committed to his wife that he would pick the kids up from school 3-4 times a week. His values and prioritized commitments to his family superseded his job. He is one of the most successful VPs I have been associated with results-wise.

Again, my recommendation is to use GTD and 4-hour workweek principles to make sure you are working on the right things personally and professionally. Also, please sit down and align real-time requirements to your personal priorities and figure out how to get to them. An example of this is, if you want to spend more time in the evening with your family, but your workouts get in the way. Then be like Jocko Willink and buck up, get up early to work to not take that time away from your priorities.

In Conclusion-

Lastly, strategically lay out your work priorities and schedule. Do you need the number of meetings and calls etc., you have on your calendar? Can you go to every other week instead of weekly for certain meetings? Can you get away with 30 or even 45-minute meetings instead of an hour? Or Tim Ferriss would point out, can you do away with the meeting altogether? For sanity’s sake to you block out time for breaks (or time to call those important to you) lunch breaks catch-up time at the beginning (GTD time) or end of the day?

How can Pliable Dynamics help improve work-life balance?

Are you ready to take control? Ready to start mapping out a balanced successful life?

Career growth is one of the most exciting jobs you can ever do. However, achieving business success while having an improved work-life balance is the goal.

Are you ready to take control of your work and be extremely successful while maximizing your time to generate an amazing life outside of work? My coaching sessions can help get you there.

When you join one of my session plans, you will get access to a proven method customized to help you grow. The coaching helps your career, maximizes time doing the things you like to do, and ultimately improves work-life balance.

So, what do you do? Head here to select a coaching plan that works for your budget and get scheduled to start accelerating your balanced life today.