How to Improve Work Life Balance:
9 Ways from Easiest to Hardest
February 8, 2020
By: Lisandro Vazquez, PE
A good work life balance can be the difference between a never ending miserable job and a worthwhile endeavor that supports you and your family on a fulfilling journey through life… and both of these scenarios can be experienced with the exact same job by the exact same person.
How can this be?
You may be musing to yourself that this is exaggeration or just “fancy talk” based on a fictional world; but trust me… this is real. And the realization of the importance—I mean TRUE IMPORTANCE—of a healthy work life balance is becoming more and more evident in today’s hyper-information age.
“Great,” you may say, “I already know I need to balance work and play. Duh… everybody ‘knows’ that. It’s the actual implementation of the idea that presents the problem.”
Seriously, how can I (I mean you and me) actually make some tangible progress on this topic when it sometimes seems like our schedules are already set for us?
Luckily, improving your work life balance may be easier than you think. There’s a wide range of things you can do to bring about great benefits to your personal enjoyment and satisfaction, but the extent of the change is going to be based on your individual level of comfort coupled with your willingness to take action and assert yourself.
Consider the following 9 ways to improve your work life balance from easiest to hardest. I have one quick favor to ask though. Before discounting the tough ones, or thinking that you “couldn’t possibly” make them work, take some serious time to focus on what you are trying to achieve.
What is your goal? Do you desire to have more time to work on the things you love—hobbies, passions, pursuits? Do you want to spend more quality daylight hours with your children or significant other? Do you want to lift weights, go for long walks, or do yoga? Do you just want to work less and “stress out” less?
How IMPORTANT are these things to YOU?
Now, I challenge you to read the following 9 tips and figure out HOW and WHEN you will change your course towards an improved work life balance. ENJOY!
1. Take advantage of a flexible hours policy.
If your company allows you to choose your “clock in” and “clock out” time within an allowable range this can materially improve your work life balance without necessarily reducing your hours at work.
What do I mean by this? Take for example my own case. By shifting my work schedule earlier in the day—even by just 30-45 minutes—I save half an hour of commute time for each roundtrip due to traffic. This extra 2.5 hours per week ends up equaling 5 full days per year spent with family rather than driving.
What could this mean for YOU? Shifting later in the day can mean walking or driving your kids to school. Shifting much earlier can mean getting off work early enough to pick up kids from school and be there for them for the rest of the day. You could go to the gym like you’ve promised yourself. You could paint, golf, watch tv… whatever… you could do what YOU want to do.
You’re still working the same hours, you’re just choosing to work during times that are better matched with your personal schedule.
If your company doesn’t have an approved flexible hours policy… don’t just accept it… make the case to your manager on why it would be a good idea for the company to adopt this policy. If they aren’t too keen on it, present the reasons why it should be made an exception for YOUR specific situation. If you just accept the standard work schedule, and hate it, but you do nothing about it… you won’t escape it unless you change jobs or professions.
2. Take time off… for mental health too.
You’ve earned your vacation, so take it! The surprising thing is, according to a Glassdoor survey the average worker in the United States has used barely half of his/her earned vacation hours.1 Even worse, 66% of US workers admit to doing WORK during their vacation. C’mon guys… give it a break!
Vacation time allows you to “reset” your attitude, your mind, or your life if you allow it to. Furthermore, paid time off (vacation & sick time) is part of your total compensation package, so you’ve actually already worked for it. Use it. Not using it is equivalent to working for free.
If your company separates vacation time and sick time, keep in mind that you don’t have to be “physically” sick to take sick days. Mental health is just as important—perhaps more important—than physical health.
If you aren’t convinced that taking time off is needed, consider the following from a work and wellbeing survey conducted by the American Psychological Association:
“The majority of working Americans reported positive effects of taking vacation time and said when they return to work their mood is more positive (68 percent) and they have more energy (66 percent) and motivation (57 percent) and feel less stressed (57 percent). Additionally, working adults reported that, following time off, they were more productive (58 percent) and their work quality was better (55 percent).”2
That sounds pretty good to me; what about you?
A Healthy Mind
A Healthy Life
Again, when you take time off… DON’T work. Make sure you can detach yourself from the office; otherwise, you will remain shackled to the same work-related stressors you face day-in and day-out.
This is partly why that despite the positive effects of vacations, “about one in five (21 percent) said they feel tense or stressed out while on vacation, more than a quarter (28 percent) said they wind up working more than they planned to and 42 percent reported that they dread returning to work.”2
I know that last bit seems to contradict the earlier mentioned benefit of going on vacation, but it’s important to acknowledge. Going on vacation without setting yourself up to SUCCEED AT VACATIONING is missing out on a valuable opportunity to decompress and have some fun.
Plan ahead. Let your co-workers and clients know in advance that you’ll be UNAVAILABLE for a set number of days. Even if you are actually willing to answer a call or email while on vacation, tell everyone in advance that you MAY be unable to monitor emails or receive calls. Most of them will plan accordingly rather than pinging you with incessant calls or emails that realistically aren’t urgent. They’ll figure it out.
So, take some time for your family, friends, acquaintances… whoever… but most importantly take some time for YOU.
Set up an automatic reply BEFORE you go on vacation to prepare your clients/coworkers:
Hello,
I will be out of the office from Monday January 6th until Monday January 13th. I will not have access to email, but if you need immediate assistance please contact companymainemail@email.com or call 123-456-7890.
Thanks,
Lisandro Vazquez, PE
3. Prioritize Your Schedule.
Adjust your schedule to attend important personal, family, or community events. Yes this sounds a bit obvious, but too many of us miss out on the “little things in life” because we immediately assume we “have to be at work.” Many people DON’T EVEN ASK to adjust their schedule because they just assume they have to be at work. In effect, they don’t try.
I’ll admit it… I’ve been guilty of this, and I know there are others out there too (millions of others).
Your life IS important. It’s important to YOU. It is the reason why you work. Therefore, your work must support your life. Make sure you are prioritizing what is important to you—to your life.
If you want to go to a game on a workday afternoon… talk to your manager. Use some vacation hours; maybe shift hours to other days; maybe arrive at work really early so you can leave earlier that day; maybe work on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon as a tradeoff… better yet… maybe you don’t actually NEED to make up those hours. Work with your manager or supervisor. You might get a better deal than you had imagined.
And remember, this doesn’t have to be some rare event. You can do this often, as long as you PLAN AHEAD and ensure that your work is getting done.
4. Avoid checking work emails or chat messages when off the clock.
Some of you may be wondering why this is ranked as being more difficult than actually using all your vacation hours; but for some of us… it’s just too tempting to check email since it’s with you all the time on your phone :-/ .
Besides, many of us share the feeling—often incorrectly—that “if I don’t do it, nobody will.” And for you Type A personalities it’s too easy to “justify” taking all your vacation time (Tip #2) if you know you’ll be doing a little bit of work at home or away to keep on track with job deadlines or duties.
Even if you are “just seeing if you received something” or if you promise yourself that you won’t respond to an email or message until you’re at the office… just don’t do it.
Stop
Checking
Your Work
Email at Home
Consider the following reasons:
- You are forcing yourself to make a series of micro-decisions even if you are “just looking.”
- What if the news is bad? Do you want to stress about it while lying in bed trying to sleep? Do you want to be thinking about work while at your kid’s soccer game; or, on an awesome hike you’ve always dreamed of doing; or, on a beautiful tropical beach?
- If you’re “just checking” and you “won’t answer the email until you get back to the office”… take a moment to think about that… if you aren’t going to respond until you get back to the office, then there’s no point in checking your messages until you get back to the office. Fear not, if something is urgent enough your team, co-workers, or boss can call you and leave a voicemail (since you won’t be answering work related calls while on vacation… right?).
De-coupling yourself from work—even if you LOVE your job—is paramount for extracting the maximum gain from your time while away from work. You will improve the quality of your time off as you’ll be free from work related distractions & decisions.
Free from Email!
Free from Email!
5. Avoid Work for Work’s Sake.
Don’t be at work “to get your hours” or because you think that you have to be there if you don’t actually need to (i.e. don’t work for work’s sake). If you aren’t being productive on a certain day, rather than wasting your time, your team’s time, and your company’s resources, consider the following:
- Primary consideration: Is the specific task you’re working on 100% required? Is it 100% required that this task be done RIGHT NOW? Is it required that YOU perform this task; or, can somebody else do it? Is this a task that YOU have made up for yourself—reasons aside—which wouldn’t be missed by anybody else on your team if not performed?
- Is it ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED that you work an EXACT number of hours over a SPECIFIC timeframe? Is there some wiggle room in your schedule? Have you actually had a discussion with your team, yourself, or with co-workers or managers about hours flexibility?
- If you MUST work a set number of hours due to company policy or contractual obligation, would it be more efficient to leave early today and catch up on your hours tomorrow? If you‘re your own boss… consider why you feel that you MUST work “x” number of hours. Consider reading “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It” by Michael E. Gerber. Even if you’re running a medium or large sized firm much of the philosophy in the book is scalable. It can apply to your personal life as well.
- If you just “don’t feel like it” today, first try to discover why you don’t “feel like it,” and then think of what steps you could do to improve how you feel. Can you go to a coffee shop for an hour or two? Can you leave your place of work, maybe drive somewhere or take the train and go to a park? Essentially, would it help to take an hour or two off of work for a break and then return feeling refreshed? You may have to stay at work later, but you might actually feel BETTER about it.
- Can you work short days all week in exchange for a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday at a time of your choosing? Would this better suit your personal life throughout the week?
6. Set a cap on your hours.
I have rated this action as being a little bit more difficult than the previous recommendations, but I think the perceived difficulty here is largely based on your personal circumstances and chosen strategy for professional advancement.
The reason I mention this is that while it may be “easy” to say I will only work 35 or 40 hours per week and I’m not available for overtime, you do not live/work in a vacuum. You can be almost guaranteed that some supervisors or senior level employees will NOT view this favorably, regardless of how you personally view the work-life balance issue. You have to keep in mind that others will view hours, vacation time, sick leave, etc. through their own eyes and will apply their own personal views and biases even if unintentionally.
While you can think “well… that’s their problem…” you aren’t necessarily 100% correct. It could end up being your problem. If you’re viewed as “not being a team player” many of your actions may be viewed from a negative bias even if you’re performing at the exact same level of skill/output as coworkers. And then think what would happen if your management goes along with this, but a few months later the company is suddenly presented with an incredible opportunity to greatly expand its clientele and they just need the team as a whole to pitch in an extra 5 or 6 hours each per week until they can onboard some extra staff.
What do you do? Do you agree to help, but potentially weaken your stance on hours? What about the next time? Where does it stop? Do you say no, and possibly alienate yourself from your team?
Please do not misinterpret this. The intent here is NOT to dissuade you from drawing a line in the sand and taking firm action to provide the work life balance that best suits your personal circumstances. The intent is for you to approach this action in a well-thought manner that considers all the potential implications. If you can do this—thinking through all the “what ifs” that may arise—then you can think ahead of time which actions you will take and which responses will best support the continuation of your desired maximum hours cap while preserving your image amongst your peers, subordinates and supervisors.
This will allow you to have a frank and open discussion with your team members and management ahead of time and iron out the details well in advance of potential situations that could damage your position or reputation.
Similar to the previous tips for improving work life balance, there are tons of people who are already putting this strategy successfully into practice.
If you’re new to your field or if you aren’t the best at showing up “on time,” you may still be able to stick to a hard 40 hour limit, but you might be a tad more prone to running into issues with negative bias. To make this work well, you’ll need to do the absolute best you can to improve your level of knowledge, and to ensure that you are timely and responsive to the needs of your team, management, and clients. I think as long as you can do that you should be ok.
A quick word for the skeptics or “workaholics”: If you’re working 50 to 60+ hours a week for a single job, how productive do you think you are on average? Be honest with yourself… what is the difference in your personal output with a 50 hour workweek vs. a 55 hour workweek? Do you know? Really… do you truly know the specific qualitative and quantitative difference in output?
Don’t just ASSUME you are getting 5 extra hours of work done. You might actually be doing LESS work. That’s right… I said LESS.
There are countless studies which have shown decreasing productivity for increasing hours above a certain level. Further, in some cases the decrease in productivity is so extreme that some people are actually getting LESS usable work done in a 55 hour week than in a 45 hour week because of errors, fatigue, and poor prioritization. Check out this quick read from Stanford.edu if you’re interested in this bombshell of decreased overall productivity:
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/crunchmode/econ-hours-productivity.html
Sometimes it’s good to set a hard cap or deadline. If you leave your weekly work hours open-ended, then you may be setting yourself up to trudge through projects because “you’ve got time.” If you set a hard stop to your workweek, then suddenly you don’t have time to waste and you now have to be focused and productive.
This will be different for each person, but ask yourself: “Do I work more efficiently when I have a looming deadline or when there is no clearly defined completion date?”
If it really is impossible complete your recurring weekly tasks in less than 55 hours a week, perhaps you should work with your team to evaluate work distribution amongst team members or look for ways at improving efficiency & processes. If you’re a sole proprietor perhaps consider outsourcing some of your duties to part-time staff or third-party service providers.
7. Change your Monday through Friday schedule.
This one is bit more difficult to pull off, and is very dependent on your specific role and company; however, I have seen people who have negotiated an altered workweek in which they work all of their hours Monday through Thursday, and either take all of Friday off or maybe come in first thing in the morning to answer client emails or attend meetings etc.
Of course, this may be a challenge if you’re in a line of work which typically has deadlines on Fridays. But wait, you might say, can’t I just finish my projects on Thursday?
In the rational world, yes that would make sense. But realistically, there always seems to be some kind of last-minute tweak or forgotten request from a client, or owner, or co-worker that gets sent to you late on Thursday or early on Friday morning. If you aren’t in the office, who’s going to do it? Somebody else on your team?
You could have told me YESTERDAY!!!
In the rational world, yes that would make sense. But realistically, there always seems to be some kind of last-minute tweak or forgotten request from a client, or owner, or co-worker that gets sent to you late on Thursday or early on Friday morning. If you aren’t in the office, who’s going to do it? Somebody else on your team?
You could have told me YESTERDAY!!!
You can see how this might end up causing problems, yet it could work if the right procedures are in place.
Clear communication and responsiveness throughout your workweek are paramount for achieving and maintaining success with the Monday through Thursday workweek (assuming the rest of your company still works Monday through Friday).
If you think that missing the last day of the week just won’t jive with your line of work try to take a different day off rather than a Friday. Yes, I know… “but I’ll lose my three day weekends!” Remember, it comes down to a balance and that balance depends on what is important to you and what the needs of your employer are (since they are paying you).
8. Negotiate a one-day-per-week remote work agreement.
Another way to alter the work life balance without actually impacting the total number of hours worked (keeping the company happy) is to negotiate a remote work day. If you have established yourself as a reliable member of the team and are not in a significant training phase of your career (or if you’re the boss), then you probably have a better chance at setting up a one-day-per-week work from home arrangement than you might at first think.
Obviously, there may be some IT challenges that’ll need to be overcome in order to make this a reality if you’re an office worker, but my assumption is that your company probably already has protocols in place for remote access to servers and allowances for remote work.
Think about senior level management. Do they travel often for work? How do you think they conduct their computer-based work? It’s not likely that they do everything on their personal computer and then email everything to their office computer or transfer all their files to a flash drive and then plug it in when they get back to the office. Are there people who do this? Yes… there most certainly are… but obviously this is a super inefficient way of doing business.
The more likely setup being used is that they have either a company provided (or personal) laptop or tablet and are using cloud-based data storage and/or have remote access to your company’s servers.
So, if you have a computer at home that has the necessary hardware and software requirements to be able to access your office workstation remotely and conduct work efficiently, then you just need to alleviate your team’s (or your own) reservations—if any.
Wrong Cloud
The more likely setup being used is that they have either a company provided (or personal) laptop or tablet and are using cloud-based data storage and/or have remote access to your company’s servers.
Wrong Cloud
So, if you have a computer at home that has the necessary hardware and software requirements to be able to access your office workstation remotely and conduct work efficiently, then you just need to alleviate your team’s (or your own) reservations—if any.
It’s important to understand though that you’ll need to spend some time and collaborate with your IT personnel to ensure any security issues or potential glitches have been ironed out beforehand.
I have worked remotely while travelling for business so I know first-hand that this is very doable. Further, I personally know others who have actually done a one-day-per-week remote work deal. So… it CAN be done. I’m not saying it will be easy to convince your team or to get set up initially, but it’s definitely something that is already being successfully applied by many others. This should not only allow you to cut out your work commute one day per week, but you may be able to shift your hours so that you can attend important weekly family events thereby improving your work-life balance.
9. Negotiate a complete remote work agreement:
If the majority of your work, like mine, is done on a computer, then the location where this work is performed is not particularly important so long as the work gets done and that you maintain communication with the team while meeting the customer’s needs.
This option requires a significant amount of planning and will demand extra effort to implement effectively. It is absolutely vital that you put together a formal comprehensive plan on how your remote work situation will proceed (if one does not already exist for your firm) and that you approach it as an important business transaction.
Being remote removes some ability for you to control certain situations or perceptions that may develop in the physical office which may be of consequence to you. So, your plan must ensure that you’re able to pre-empt potential pitfalls. If something goes wrong—a deadline is missed, an email is overlooked, something was misinterpreted—your “remote” situation will be an “easy” factor to latch onto when looking for reasons why things didn’t turn out well, even if this has nothing to do with the true root cause. This is not to say that it’s 100% guaranteed that all—or even any—of your coworkers or managers will unfairly blame your remote status as being a cause for screw-ups, but it’s crucial that we are honest with ourselves and recognize that this IS a possible outcome.
That being said, it is imperative to be proactive in ensuring you have a set strategy in place which provides for purposeful “visibility” of you to your team, that you have a clear set of rules for communication, and that you periodically review your situation with your team (politely force an informal review if necessary).
This will allow you to gauge the overall attitude toward your remote work situation and will present opportunities for you to mitigate any developing problems well before they become serious enough to threaten your newly found freedom. Don’t overlook this aspect of remote work. Maintaining a positive image to others is CRUCIAL for maintaining healthy relationships with your team and for fostering the continued success of your remote work. This is in YOUR best interest.
Last thought on this course of action… if you’re considering switching companies, perhaps you should try to get hired with a remote work agreement from the beginning. You may have to work in the office during your initial onboarding, but if you get this worked into your contract from day one then you save yourself from having to set it up later when your presence in the office will be “missed.”
There are plenty of online resources, books, and guides etc. on how to work remotely, so I’ll leave the rest of the do’s and don’ts to others for now.
Final consideration: If you find that implementing the tips above are met with immediate and stubborn resistance from your employer or your team (yes… even if you are “the boss” you may still feel trapped); then you may need to take a step back and view your work life balance in a more holistic sense. If you believe that it would be impossible to achieve a healthy work life balance with your chosen job or career… then you may want to consider a new position or career.
Even if you think you’re “too far” in your career to make a change, please keep an open mind and go back to Tip #3 “Prioritize.” What is IMPORTANT to you—to your life? If you really do feel trapped, you may enjoy the life design approach developed by two Stanford University professors, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Their book, “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well Lived, Joyful Life,” is an outstanding guide to figuring out what you want to do NEXT. It’s short, fun, and effective.
Best wishes on your journey to improved work life balance!
Thanks for sharing your time with Engineer Q&A.