Managing your work life!
Managing you work life can be hard, understanding how to optimise your home life while working from home is essential to you wellbeing!
The National Work Life campaign is designed to support employee wellbeing and encourage staff to have the balance between work and life.
Laura and Ruth from Cheshire Change Hub have both struggled with keeping work life separate from home life; having the commute to the office and back home allowed them to decompress and switch off from work, but bringing work into the home has been tricky.
Together, Laura and Ruth have joined up to give you a guide through keeping your work life balanced!
Work Life Balance
Monday
Focus on your work space; is there a dedicated area in your home that is set apart from where you socialise? Having a comfortable and separate work area not only will help you switch from working to home life, but allows you to keep your focus on your work.
Starting your working from home routine is essential, breaking up the day and letting yourself breathe from work can really improve your mental health. Take a walk at lunch or after work, spend some time away from the house and help to develop a healthy sleep routine. Small changes to your every day life like this will slowly improve your wellbeing both mentally and physically.
Tuesday
Time to focus on your diary! Add in some focus time to your day so you can plan ahead for the next few days. Manage your schedule and set time aside for certain tasks, allowing set time will help you to achieve what needs to be done and allow you to take time to relax and switch off too.
Prioritise time to exercise or join in other activities you’re passionate about! Find out what works best for you and use this to relax and enjoy yourself!
Wednesday
We’re sticking with a focus on your diary today, as we know it can be tricky to get this right! We often think we can fit so much into our diaries that we cram it back to back with appointments or meetings and don’t allow for the things that crop up in-between like phone calls and emails that also require your attention.
Don’t put too many things into your diary! Be realistic and understand your limits within your working day; setting unrealistic goals of what to achieve in a day will affect how you begin to feel when seeing a packed day and not allowing any time to relax and take time away.
Thursday
As you start to get work in order and understand your limitations, Thursday’s are good time to plan for some fun activities for the weekend! Whether it’s a day trip, movie night or having a leisurely stroll round a local park it’s good to have something to look forward to.
You may want time out to do this on your own, but if you do want company there are lots of community groups and activities you can pop along to so you’re not going it alone. If you would like to know more about local support groups or need support to access click here
Friday
As the week closes, take a look over what you have achieved and whether you’ve struggled to keep on top of work that needs to be done. Sometimes it is okay to see the limitations and reach out to your manager to talk through what you have achieved and what you need to cut back on or out to allow for more time in the following week to complete important tasks.
You made need extra support to work through tasks, don’t add that pressure onto yourself but recognise it and set it up for the following week!
Weekend
In the same way that we can plan too much work into our working week, we sometimes try and do the same with our weekends. Try to book in at least 1 weekend a month where you haven’t got anything planned and you can catch up on those things you haven’t been able to do.
Take some time to complete life admin by booking that doctors appointment, car mot, vet visit or anything else you’ve been meaning to do – whatever you need that will make you and your family more effectively and take off some stress during the week.
Lastly, we suggest planning you meals. Sunday cook day is a firm favorite of ours where you can batch cook healthy easy meals that you can bung in the oven or microwave after a hard days work – Not only can this save time but money too!
For more information about Work Life Week click here or search on social media using #WorkLifeWeek