When it comes to juggling a full time job, a social life and ‘me’ time, it can be a huge struggle. More often than not, the two lines get blurred and before you know it, you’re having a mental breakdown – you’re rushed off your feet at work, but at the same time you haven’t seen your family in months. Anyway, 2020 is here and we are well and truly into the new year, and there’s no better time to establish a healthy work/life balance than now. Ironically I’m currently juggling two part time jobs and my website/social media stuff, I’m organizing my time wisely so that I can do what I need to do as well as what I actually want to do. If you’re someone who struggles to establish the work/life balance, here are something’s I’ve learnt over the years,
| MAKE THE EFFORT
I know it can be hard, especially after a long and tiresome day at work, but if you don’t put the effort to actually go out, you never will. Back in my uni days (not that long ago) when my friends were home from university over summer, I wanted to see them as much as possible as I felt like I hadn’t seen them in ages and this meant that I had to actually make the effort to see them. There were times where I had worked from twelve o’clock midday, to eleven thirty at night and I would drive myself straight from work to one of their houses to spend a few hours with them, despite having work at ten o’clock the following morning. There’s no doubt that it’s tiring, but at the same time, there’s nothing like spending time with your friends, whether it’s at the pub, in a park or just at someone’s house spending hours and hours on end, just chatting about random stuff.
| USE YOUR TIME
This is something that can be quite tricky, if you work in a job that is particularly physically draining, as I’m sure all you want to do in your free time is lay in bed watching catch-up TV until you next need to be up for work. This is the thing that really messed me up when I started working full time, which consequentially led to my blog taking a back seat. I would just stay in bed all day on my day off (apart from a quick trip to the nail shop) and I wouldn’t do anything else really. After a couple of months, I actually started to use my days off to catch up on blogging and actually doing things. For example, the day that I’m writing this is my day off work and I have about another five or so posts to write after this in addition to social media and emails to do (albeit, I’m in my bed, but at least I’m doing something productive). I’m now at a point where if I don’t do anything productive on my days off, I feel like I’ve wasted a day and I’m not going to get where I want to be in life by doing nothing – so use your time wisely!
| SAY NO
Although I previously said, to make the effort, don’t be afraid to actually say no. If you have limited time anyway, you don’t want to waste it doing something you couldn’t give a flying monkey’s about. I’m actually that person who up until recently said no to a lot of motives. Pretty much anywhere that I couldn’t drive to, didn’t like the food or just in general wasn’t interested in or couldn’t be bothered to go to, I wouldn’t go to. A few of my friends are vegan, so they like going to vegan hot spots, which are mainly situated around central London and me being a meat eater, I’d happily get a Nandos from around the corner, rather than trekking into central London to pay an insane amount for some vegan chicken – which I’ve heard is actually very good, but it would cost me more money to pay for travel than if I were to quickly walk or drive to Nandos.
| ORGANISE YOUR TIME
If you work a 9-5 this is probably a little bit easier, as you already know your work schedule, but if like me you only find out your work schedule a few weeks or days in advance, it’s a little trickier. I try and organise my time as best as I can with the help of my trustee Filofax. By organising your time, you will get the most out of it and therefore be more productive and not feel like you’ve wasted a sh*t tonne of time. It’s all about balance and it means that you can spend more time doing what you want. Everyone’s different and has different priorities, for example my priorities are my website and seeing my friends/family, but someone else’s may be to spend every waking moment going shopping. I’ve just found that organising my time has reduced the amount of time I waste and allowed me to do more of what I want to do.
How do you get the work/life balance right?
