There has been a lot of talk going around about balancing your work and life by compartmentalizing your time so that you can devote time for your personal life as well. This sounds great and would have been perfect in the ’90s when most people enjoyed a 9 to 5 job but in today’s world where the competition is so high that if you snooze, you lose, allocating time for your personal lives is getting more and more difficult.
With so many people opting to be a freelancer or an entrepreneur, they are unable to devote as much time for themselves because they do not have a fixed number of working hours hence the best way to deal with this situation is by getting more creative. If you cannot take time off work for yourself, then why not take time for yourself while on work?
Not many people understand this concept well yet hence we have listed below a few ways you could integrate your work and life;
1. Plan a Schedule That Works for You:
The traditional working time is Monday to Friday 9-5 pm but this time may not suit everyone as you may have other priorities or commitments. You may be an early riser or someone who sleeps really late and the same schedule cannot work the best for everyone hence to be able to give your best in work and also be able to enjoy your day, work when you are maximum productive.
2. Individualize Employee Benefits:
Companies which focus on integrating work and life of employees give them added benefits to make this model work based on individual preferences. For example, the flexibility to work as per reference or providing unconventional office space with different work areas and cafes to feel relaxed throughout the day or providing a play area for kids so that single parents can work at peace while being closer to their kids.
3. Reschedule Your Weekend:
Integrating work and life does not mean you need to work harder, in fact, you can play harder. People who work in traditional offices spend their weekends dreading about the heavy workloads they have to deal with on Monday but a better way is to just take out a few hours in the weekend to finish off simple tasks so that you are not much loaded when the week starts and your weekend gets to extend longer.
4. Make Co-workers Your Friends:
Instead of just meeting co-workers for work and having a different set of friends, why not make your co-workers your friends? It would be a nice change to work with your friends and you can have small meetings in breaks to have a chat about what is going on around the world. This would take off your mind from work for a while and relax you at your working space. It also gets easy to work with your friends and hence work stress reduces further.
5. Enjoy Unlimited Workcations:
People love jobs that do not restrict their vacations, especially when someone loves to travel. The process of visa earlier restricted the number of days a person could travel but with facilities like an approved ETIAS Visa, you can visit the Schengen Area for up to 90 days within a 180-day period which means the longer duration of travel. Integrating work and life would mean doing things you love to do along with your work, be it travel, reading a book or learning music.
In-Conclusion:
Work-life integration works differently for different people as what works for me may not work for you hence you need to circle around this idea a bit to come up with a way to integrate both.