We all need to find a comfortable work life balance that includes time for all the important aspects of our lives that we feel are important including family, work, physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing and social time.
Life balance doesn’t just happen, you have to create it by prioritising what is truly important to you, taking control of your life plan and scheduling in your priorities.
Everyone’s life balance is different and will alter as the needs of your children change and demands of work evolves over time. Finding a comfortable and healthy balance for you is something you need to work on and fine-tune over your life-time stages.
Top Tips
- Identify your priorities. Work out what is important to you at this stage of your life. Try not to juggle too many big projects at once. Small steps done well is the best plan.
- Manage your time. Use a weekly calendar and map out your priorities to create a typical week with time allocated to our priorities. (family, work, exercise, leisure, relationships etc).
- Schedule family and kids time into your week. Book in family time, dads and kid’s time.
- Multitask and overlap activities. Exercise with the family, eat meals together, introduce your kids to hobbies you enjoy and do them together.
- Schedule some ‘you’ time as well. Don’t feel guilty, this time is important for your health and wellbeing as a dad for your kids.
- Try to ‘switch off’ from work at home. (phone calls, emails, overtime)
- Explore work options around flexible work hours and working from home.
- Pace yourself. If you feel yourself getting burned out, don’t hesitate to clear your schedule, reset and recharge.
- Don’t postpone making changes. You might regret it. Time doesn’t stand still.
Takeaway action
Identify an area you would like to work on to improve your balance of life and set a goal to work on to make these changes.
