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Maintaining A Healthy Work Life Balance: Prioritizing Self-Care, Leisure, & Academic Commitments

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work life balance

Maintaining a healthy work life balance can be rather difficult. As hardworking humans, it is no secret that we have many things to juggle. We struggle with time management and balance, as expected.

However, there are many ways that we can balance these things in our lives. Before fully balancing these things, we must identify barriers holding us back from managing our time properly.

Ask yourself these questions?

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  • Am I being as productive as I can be?
  • Have I accomplished all the things I desire and need to?
  • If not, what is stopping me?
  • What takes up most of my time?

Setting Timers/ Schedules/ Routines For Work Life Balance

Setting timers are one thing that will save you from not getting things done. We all may have a planner and agenda; however, making ourselves check these agendas regularly can be difficult.

This is why an alarm for self-care and other leisure activities can be healthy after you complete your top priorities.

Make Sure You Can Handle It

Often as humans looking for more opportunities, we tend to give ourselves many tasks to handle at once. However, we must recognize that we won’t be efficient in these tasks if we pile too many things on our plates.

You may be doing well in one area and may need to improve in another. Therefore, we should give ourselves a limit on what we should take on.

If having two jobs and two extracurricular activities has become draining, and you need to be more effective, you may need to eliminate one of these tasks from your schedule. Having less will allow you to get more things done and perform exceptionally in all areas and tasks.

Boundaries For Work Life Balance

If you have friends and attend a university, you know the struggles of saying “no” can be taunting. With different personalities and friends that you care for, it can be hard to respect your boundaries by sitting out on some things.

Not setting boundaries and conforming to the ways of others can be a hassle. It is one reason why many students have trouble completing tasks. Just as you balance your work and extracurricular activities, you must balance your hangout time and friend time as well. 

For example, staying consistent with your work during the week and using the weekend to have fun may work for you. This is a perfect balance.

Your extracurricular activity days and working days range from Monday to Wednesday, while the rest of your week is completely free. Those extra open days may be for hanging out, catching up on alone time, and self-care.

This is a perfect work-life balance. However, this is more challenging than it sounds. This is why boundaries are important!

Limit Distractions For Work Life Balance

As college students, it’s only normal and valid that we are distracted. There are several distractions surrounding us that we must become accustomed to.

Our distractions range from social media to our friends that we love. Social media is one of the number one distractions of our generation and even generations before us. They cause us to waste time and be less productive. 

You may say what does this have to do with balance? If you went to work, completed homework, or participated in extracurricular activities. However you may be tired, but there are still things that must be done that social media causes us to neglect.

Social media keeps us wrapped up in society and the outside world even after connecting with people through our daily activities. It may be a release; however, if you scroll for hours, how can you truly balance your self-care? 

Believe it or not, your friends can be a distraction to you and may very well be why you lack a healthy work-life balance. This is why schedules, routines, and boundaries are very important to implement into your life. 

Taking Breaks/ Resting

Taking breaks is a vital part of our livelihood in everything that we do. With rest, completing tasks and managing some activities throughout the day will be possible.

You have not mastered a great balance if you don’t have a good resting schedule. However, go easy on yourself. Slowly insert resting into your schedule of things to prioritize. This will help you slowly make resting a healthy habit when necessary.

We hope that each of these is helpful and allows you to live a much more balanced lifestyle in the future. This is a journey, not a destination, so give yourself grace and remember that the process will take time to adjust.

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