This post is about 13 ways to perfect work-life balance in your 30s.
Technology these days makes it OH so easy to blend the "work" and "personal" parts of our lives into one. Often, the line becomes unclear.
Like, is answering an email at dinner all that bad? What about answering a text message from a friend while sitting on a call? Is checking Facebook between meetings okay? Surely, taking a quick call while on vacation isn't crossing any lines, right?
Maybe you struggle with finding a balance. I get it. I spent a majority of my 20s with virtually zero balance. Often putting in 80+ hours a week between my two jobs.
In recent years, I've fortunately figured out quite a few strategies that have helped me strike a greater balance.
As a recovering workaholic who knew no boundaries whatsoever, I now want to share with you 13 tried and true ways to equalize your "work" and "life" sides.
This post is about 13 ways to perfect work-life balance in your 30s.
1. Shift your mindset: commit to separating work from your personal life.
At the end of the day, you can want to have a greater work-life balance all you want. But until you actually commit to separating the two, you never will.
For years, I told myself I needed better balance. But nothing ever changed.
It wasn't until I finally committed to separating work time from "me" time that I saw any improvements.
Once you shift your mindset and decide to separate the two, you'll naturally start seeking out better work-life balance habits, such as the following strategies listed in this post.
However, it all starts with that commitment. Without it, nothing will improve.
2. Use lists and calendar blocking to time manage during working hours.
A lot of people claim there just "aren't enough hours in the day." To be frank, I disagree.
8+ hours is a long time. There are genuinely enough hours during the workday that you should never (or at least, rarely) need to work extra hours.
Quick chats with colleagues, browsing social media, taking personal calls, running out to grab a coffee. These may feel minor in the moment. But time-consumers like these quickly add up.
To maximize my productivity, I begin everyday by listing my must-do tasks. Then, I use calendar blocking to manage my working hours. If I am able to finish a task early, then I gift myself a break to do whatever I want for the remainder of the block.
For example. Let's say I schedule a focus block for 60 minutes to knock out a list of 10 tasks, but it only takes 53 minutes. I then reward myself with a 7-minute break.
However, if I do not finish an activity within a blocked period, then I just roll right into the next one. No chatting with a friend. No checking Facebook. No passing "go" and collecting $200. Right into the next task I go.
So if you're someone who feels like there "just aren't not enough hours in the day," I challenge you to analyze how you spend your time. I bet you can find more hours than you thought existed.
3. Take real breaks throughout the day.
Sustaining focus on only job-related tasks for 8+ hours a day saps you of all cognitive energy.
Think of your brain like a car. Cars cannot go and on endlessly. They need to refuel every so often. Like a car, your brain also needs to refuel in order to go, go, go. When you start running out of focus fuel, I bet that's when you start reaching for your phone or other time-consuming distractions.
Answering emails while eating lunch is not taking a break. Texting your coworkers while taking the dog out is not taking a break. Calling into a meeting while walking on the treadmill for 15 minutes is not taking a break.
Taking a real break means pausing the Slack notifications, closing your computer, and completely walking away.
Breaks are your time to refuel, whatever "refuel" looks like for you. For me, I like to steal just a couple minutes here or there, during lunch and between blocked tasks, to work on this blog. The creative outlet helps me refuel.
I promise, everything will not completely implode if you go MIA for 10 minutes or so. (And if things are on the verge of total implosion when you're thinking about going on break, maybe don't take a break right at that very moment.)
When I stopped working through breaks and gave myself just a couple minutes to mentally refuel, I found myself that much more productive when it came time to refocus.
I bet you will, too.
4. Activate your "DND" while working.
When most people think about a poor work-life balance, they tend to blame work for encroaching upon personal time. However, it's just as important to make sure you don't let personal time bleed into work time.
Personal devices are rife with distractions. Social media, text messages, cat memes, games, etc. Did you know the average person receives 63 push notifications a day? That's a ton of opportunity for wasted time.
The best way to avoid these distractions is to eliminate them. I recommend activating your DND during periods where you need to just focus and crank out some work.
Personally, I like to leave my phone in a completely different room when I'm super busy.
Then, once I'm all caught up, I allow myself to take a quick break to catch up on everything I missed while my DND was on. (And it's never anything super pressing.)
5. Actually leave the work behind when you leave work.
If you've put in an honest full day of work, then reward yourself by bringing zero work home with you. No answering emails. No typing up meeting agendas. No flipping through binders. Nothing.
Unless the very company itself will cease to exist if the work is not done before the start of the next business day, leave it for tomorrow's to-do list.
6. Leave your computer at the workplace.
Laptops are great, but unfortunately they're portable. Because a laptop can be used on the go, there's this idea (and expectation we put upon ourselves!) that we should just carry it with us everywhere.
Rewind several years. I'm sure you remember everyone working on desktops. You didn't see people lugging those things all over the place, did you?
Not at all. Just because a laptop is portable doesn't mean it needs to be attached to you. So leave the computer at work.
And if you work from home, leave your computer in your home office.
When I started leaving my computer at home, it increased my productivity immensely. Because I knew I'd have no access to the tech after work, it forced me to get my stuff done throughout the day.
9. Have designated "work" and "personal" spaces.
I no longer allow my work computer in the living room. Likewise, my personal computer stays out of the office.
To further separate your work from your personal life, take some time to determine where work will live and where personal life will live. Then, respect those boundaries.
When you're able to restrict work and life to designated spaces, it makes keeping work and life separate from each other that much easier.
7. Remove work emails from your personal device.
The easiest way to cut yourself off from the constant barrage of work emails is simply to remove work emails from your phone. Or at least mute them outside of working hours.
Personally, I like to have work emails come through during off-work hours only because I like to keep a pulse on what to expect the next day. (Will things be smooth? Or am I walking into a total cluster?) I'm just someone who tries to avoid being blindsided at all costs.
However, I never respond to anything unless it is life-or-death.
Which has never, ever been the case.
8. Keep work on work devices and personal life on personal devices.
Don't just remove your work emails from your personal device, keep work completely off all your personal devices, and vice versa.
Years ago, I used to have all my accounts (work and personal) logged into all my devices (work and personal). It was convenient because I could access whatever account I wanted whenever I wanted to.
But this caused issues for me because I could access whatever account I wanted whenever I wanted to. It didn't matter which device I was on because there was no differentiation.
Now, I only access personal accounts on personal devices and work accounts on work devices. This removes the convenience of clicking back and forth between life and work. So I never feel tempted to bounce back and forth between life and work.
I also believe that if work needs to be able to get ahold of me 24/7, they ought to supply me with a work phone and an up-front expectation.
10. Have hobbies (and a life) outside of work.
Sure, if you're off work and not doing anything else, it's easy to grab your work computer and fire off an email or two.
This is why I suggest having hobbies and interests you look forward to outside of work. If you enjoy exercising, for example, why on Earth would you feel inclined to check a work email during a gym sesh? If you enjoy baking, why would you stop mid-cupcake-decorating to ping a coworker after hours?
Having hobbies and an actual life outside of work lessens your chances of letting work spill into personal time. No one wants to interrupt an enjoyable after-work activity to do extra work.
11. Use your vacation time - and don't feel bad about using it.
I'm always baffled when folks feel bad for using vacation time. Either that, or I'm a employee because I never feel bad about using my PTO.
Sure, maybe a coworker will have to pick up some additional work while you're gone. But guess what? When they go on their vacation, you can cover them back.
Sure, maybe you'll come back to a lot of work. That's okay. You'll get caught up.
When you've earned time off, take it! This is your job literally telling you, "Take a break."
12. Remember: Unpaid overtime = free labor.
This was a tidbit of information a veteran teacher shared with me relatively early on in my teaching career.
Any work you do outside of your contracted work hours is, in essence, free labor. I don't know about you, but I know my skills have financial worth. And I don't work for free.
If this is an area you struggle with, remember that your skills and talents valuable. And your value come at a price.
If it didn't, you wouldn't have a paid position in the first place.
13. If your job expectations genuinely require you to drain all your time and energy, LEAVE.
To be honest, no job is so important that you should let it dominate your entire life.
If fulfilling your job duties requires the complete absence of any sort of personal life, the time has come to seek employment elsewhere.
Burnout is real, and you don't deserve to live that kind of zombie-like existence.
These are some of the ways I've worked to perfect my work-life balance. And now I'm wondering: What tips and tricks do you have when it comes to improving work life balance? What works for you? Let me know in the comments!
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