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Hey, I Miss You. Yours Truly, Work-Life Balance

Posted on by by Nataliya Melnyk, Marketer at Amy

Achieving a healthy work-life balance has become a top priority today, especially as remote work blurs the boundaries between professional and personal life. Harmony gets lost in long hours, late nights, and weekend work creeping into what should be your personal time. 

What does social research tell us?

Yet, prioritizing a balance of work and life can transform how you feel day-to-day: boost productivity, reduce stress, and enhance your well-being. In this article, we will cover the work-life balance meaning, the benefits of work-life balance, and how to spot and improve a poor one. 

What exactly does work-life balance mean?

Work-life balance generally refers to a harmony between professional and personal life. Everyone’s ideal balance is unique. It’s like an individual formula where the sum isn’t only counted in the number of hours you work but rather in ensuring that time at work and home is spent meaningfully and productively. Too many personal commitments can be as overwhelming as when work consumes your life, making it hard to find a true balance.

You don’t put in less effort or compromise any of your goals. You create boundaries that let you invest fully in both areas. You find your rhythm without the pressure of competing priorities.

For many parents, flexible work options are a benefit, such as a remote format or flexible hours, to have quality family time without sacrificing work productivity. For many corporate workers, a good work-life balance is to leave the office at 5 PM and return at 9 AM the next day. For many young professionals who combine study at university and work, having a part-time occupation is a must. 

Why is a healthy work-life balance important?

Keeping a balance between work and life matters because proper coordination of the two affects overall well-being:

  • Health: better mental health and fewer stress-related illnesses.
  • Relationships: closer connections with loved ones and higher levels of emotional fulfillment.
  • Productivity: better productivity as you need time to recharge to maintain focus and can make room in your schedule for hobbies or other leisure activities.

When in harmony, everything flows better. But what if things start to fall out of work-life balance? The truth is, when work starts to dominate, or you are constantly juggling personal duties, the impact can be damaging. That’s why we will review how to spot a poor work-life balance.

the image of family and a healthy work-life balance

Success story at Amy: from feeling overwhelmed to bringing work and life into balance

Background

Mary came to a career coach feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. She was working late hours and weekends, adjusting to a new city, and struggling to find any enjoyment in her life. She held onto a rigid work routine that added stress, even though it wasn’t serving her well. Mary wanted to change her apartment, as her current one made her feel cramped, but she didn’t have the time. She was also pushing herself hard in sports despite a knee injury.

Our approach

Together with a career coach, Mary embarked on a three-month coaching journey focused on rediscovering what she truly enjoyed and aligning her lifestyle with those preferences. Here is an overview of what was done:

  • Values discovery and prioritization. We explored Mary’s core values to understand what mattered to her. This helped Mary recognize that her well-being and personal happiness were as important as her professional achievements.
  • Identifying inner resources, skills, and external supports. This process boosted Mary’s confidence and made her feel empowered to make decisions that aligned with her values.
  • Stress management techniques. We introduced mindfulness exercises, breathing techniques, and journaling to manage stress effectively. This helped Mary break the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and regain clarity.
  • Goal alignment and adjustments. Mary’s initial goals were reassessed and adjusted to be more realistic and aligned with her current lifestyle and well-being needs. Smaller, actionable steps replaced vague or overly ambitious targets.
  • Lifestyle rebalancing strategies. Mary shifted her exercise routine to focus on healing her knee injury, integrating yoga and low-impact activities instead of high-intensity sports. She worked on redesigning her daily schedule, allocating specific times for relaxation, hobbies, and apartment hunting.
  • Step-by-step vision, mission, and strategy development. We worked together to craft a clear vision of her ideal life, defining her mission in both personal and professional contexts. We created a step-by-step strategy, breaking her vision into achievable milestones with timelines and actionable steps. This gave Mary a structured roadmap to follow, making her goals feel attainable and less overwhelming.

Results achieved

Over time, Mary found a new apartment that felt like home, modified her sports routine to suit her physical needs, and eventually took a sabbatical she had dreamed about for years. By the end of the process, she not only achieved a work-life balance she felt at ease with but also began to attract new career opportunities. Her renewed energy and confidence led her to deliver keynote speeches to audiences of over a thousand people and take on exciting new projects at work.

What is an unhealthy work-life balance?

The first and foremost sign is that you cannot disconnect from work. Despite being tired, your mind is preoccupied with tasks and deadlines. As a result, you have trouble relaxing and tend to overwork or procrastinate. But procrastination only piles up the work. Not to mention more harmful consequences such as burnout caused by chronic stress, which is a state of exhaustion, both mental and physical. 

What are other signs of poor work-life balance?

  • You lack motivation, and your performance decreases. What once felt like the right career decision no longer brings you fulfillment. Sunday evening is a cycle of ruminating thoughts about the beginning of a new working week.
  • You are generally irritated, anxious, and frustrated, and your relationships with family, friends, or colleagues suffer. You cancel shared plans and isolate.  
  • You don’t have time for yourself because you work without a break. You respond to emails on weekends and vacations and give up your hobbies.   
  • You cannot meet deadlines without overtime hours and cannot take days off, like sick leaves.

Besides, here is a self-coaching exercise to spot an unhealthy life and work balance to start taking steps for improvement. For all the questions, mark from 1 to 10, where 1 is not at all, and 10 is very often.

  • Are you satisfied with the time you dedicate to personal activities versus work commitments?
  • How often do you have activities that feel draining rather than fulfilling?
  • How often do you feel overwhelmed by work or personal responsibilities?
  • How often do you feel stressed?
  • Does your work-life balance impact your health?
  • Can you disconnect from work during your leisure time? 
  • Do you wish to set any boundaries at work or home?

If you have more than 35 points overall for all questions, consider talking to a career expert or initiate your change:

  • What would a perfect work-life balance look like for you? What changes, if any, would you like to make? Can you adjust your schedule when necessary?
  • What small steps can you take now to move closer to your healthy work-life balance?

How to improve work-life balance?

On top of self-reflection, consider the following practices:

  1. Set clear boundaries and priorities. Draw a line in a schedule between your professional and personal life. You can either stick to traditional work hours, even if you work remotely or in a hybrid format, or tailor a schedule to your lifestyle. To have a more predictable workday, limit after-hours communication by defining expectations around response times. Let your colleagues know when you are offline, like putting your work hours on your Google Calendar.
    What about priorities? Setting the right priorities means managing critical or most difficult tasks first. To define essential activities, time and calendar blocks may serve as the bridge to progress. For example, the timeboxing technique covers time blocks to different areas of life, ensuring that work doesn’t spill over into personal time.
  1. Take a break and take care of yourself. Give yourself restorative moments without sacrificing commitments. These can be short, frequent breaks like a lunchtime walk to increase your energy level or weekends spent with friends to nurture your mental wellness. A positive routine is to plan activities to eagerly await once you are off work. Practice self-care through time for personal interests, exercises, restful sleep, and healthy eating. These habits make it easier to manage work demands. 
  1. Create a dedicated workspace. As a remote professional, set a mental boundary between career and personal pursuits with a specific physical space, like a home office, work corner, or a coworking room. Physically stepping away from this space can help you mentally disconnect from your job.
  1. Delegate responsibilities. If possible, at work and home, share tasks with others to ease your workload and reduce stress. It doesn’t mean shifting your assignments onto someone else without reason. It means distributing resources wisely when you are overwhelmed, exhausted, or under pressure. If you cannot delegate tasks due to mental barriers rather than a lack of resources, talking to a career coach develops a mindset shift that makes delegation feel more achievable.

Improving a work-life balance is about prioritizing, setting boundaries, delegating when possible, and caring for yourself. By regularly analyzing what is working and what is not, you make consistent changes to align your time with what truly matters. Mindful strategies and actionable steps towards them foster a more balanced lifestyle. The process helps you avoid burnout and increase job satisfaction, as well as be thrilled and fulfilled with your personal goals.

How can career coaching support your work-life balance?

Career coaching gives you techniques and tools to achieve your professional goals. Professional goals are best tracked on a career plan. In the context of work-life balance, a long-term career plan for career development gives the structure to maintain balance in all areas of life. Together with you, a career coach sets a realistic timeline for proactive steps, skills to gain, potential career shifts, or opportunities that support personal values. 

Career coaching techniques are also tied to setting boundaries and prioritizing time effectively while sticking to the career plan. The article Work-Life Balance: 5 Time Management Techniques to Handle Work and Personal Responsibilities Effectively describes the approach in detail. 

Begin making progress

Building a career without compromising work-life balance is possible with career coaching. Amy provides instruments and expert guidance to find harmony between your career ambitions and personal life. You will improve your job satisfaction and, as a result, overall well-being. Start with Amy career coaching free exercises to make your way to a desired career format. 

Work-Life Balance: 5 Time Management Techniques to Handle Work and Personal Responsibilities Effectively

Posted on by by Nataliya Melnyk, Marketer at Amy

Effective time management is the steering wheel that keeps your work-life balance on course. If you lack proper time management, juggling work and personal responsibilities seems like a never-ending loop. You are either speeding through burnout territory or idling in procrastination land. The bright side is that you can bring your schedule back under control to be more productive, less stressed, on track with your goals, and happy about yourself and other people around you. It’s time to talk about time!

Technique 1: Prioritize, then delegate

Nino Udovychko-career coach at Amy

“Identify what’s essential and let go of tasks that don’t serve your core goals. Delegate wherever possible to maintain balance.”

Nina Udovychko, a career expert at Amy with the main area of expertise in Work-Life Balance

Prioritizing what deserves your effort overall and at the moment matters most. A healthy work-life balance requires giving the right amount of time and attention to both work and personal commitments—along with activities that help recharge you. In a daily routine or when it comes to life-changing occasions, identifying priorities is the fuel to understand what is important and what is secondary. 

Exercise: Prioritization matrix

With the Prioritization Matrix exercise at Amy, you list down tasks that need to be done, split them into four groups (urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important, not urgent and not important), and fill in each of them.

prioritization matrix exercise

After completing the exercise, you will have insights to improve focus, reduce overwhelm, and enhance productivity. A career coach can guide you if you are confused or stuck on core points to which you want to devote more time.

More and more work, why so? 

Boundaries are the guardrails of your priorities. Without drawing boundaries, priorities are tough to follow. Since you may be highly motivated or worry not to let your colleagues down, you may have trouble saying no to extra activities. Setting healthy boundaries doesn’t hurt relationships, but constantly working after hours usually does. When you overwork yourself, your personal life suffers, and when your personal life is chaotic, your work takes a hit.

Nino Udovychko-career coach at Amy

“Overworking often feels like being in a high-speed race with no end in sight. The first step of breaking it is learning to gradually slow down—sudden stops can be counterproductive. I often recommend starting with small, intentional breaks throughout the day, even just five minutes every hour, to step away, breathe, or do a bit of light exercise. Physical movement helps shake off accumulated stress and reset focus.

Once the initial pace has slowed, it’s important to step back and take a big-picture view of one’s life and career. Overworking frequently results from a lack of long-term planning, leaving people feeling reactive rather than proactive. To address this, I work with clients to develop a year-long strategy that aligns with their values and core goals. When they have a clear roadmap, they’re less likely to fall into a pattern of constant overworking. This process not only helps manage workloads effectively but also allows them to move forward with purpose, avoiding burnout along the way.”

Nina Udovychko, a career expert at Amy with the main area of expertise in Work-Life Balance

A career coach can help you develop strategies for managing expectations and create a separation between work and personal life.

Technique 2: Use your calendar

Nino Udovychko-career coach at Amy

“Schedule everything, from work tasks to personal commitments. This not only provides structure but also helps ensure that you’re making time for what matters most.“

Nina Udovychko, a career expert at Amy with the main area of expertise in Work-Life Balance

Instead of just listing to-dos, schedule them on your calendar: intervals for work engagement, exercises, or family time. Treat your personal activities with the same respect as your work appointments. This way, you are less likely to push them aside because something “urgent” and job-related came up.

Exercise: Calendar audit

Calendar Audit exercise at Amy covers your reflections on events for the past 2 weeks in areas of mental health, physical health, career, family, and personal growth. You fill in each field and answer what you want to change in your planning. What you can do today to make it happen.

Calendar Audit exercise at Amy

As a result, you gain control over your schedule, increase efficiency, and minimize stress by identifying and eliminating time-wasters. 

Technique 3: Time blocking for deep work

Nino Udovychko-career coach at Amy

“Set dedicated blocks of time for focused work without distractions, followed by blocks for personal or family time. This rhythm keeps you productive and present in all areas of life.“

Nina Udovychko, a career expert at Amy with the main area of expertise in Work-Life Balance

Deep work targets tasks that require your full attention, like strategizing, writing, and problem-solving. You create a space where you get into the flow, not to be sidetracked by interruptions. How do you accomplish uninterrupted focus? Project management tools, time trackers, and apps for limiting distraction can help control involvement. But initially, identify the best focus times when you are naturally more productive and at your mental peak.

Exercise: Energy audit

Energy Audit exercise at Amy comes in handy to optimize your energy boost, manage energy for better health, and allocate energy to priority tasks. You evaluate your day and what activities add a drive in your highest energy level periods. You do the same for the lowest energy level periods—what decreases your motivation and drains energy. The finish line of the exercise wraps small steps to matching energy patterns with your daily schedule.

Energy Audit exercise at Amy

Example of a resulting schedule:

  1. 9:00 – 10:00 AM: Morning routine
  2. 10:00 – 11:00 AM: Deep work
  3. 11:00 – 11:30 AM: Break
  4. 11:30 – 12:00 PM: Emails
  5. 12:00 – 1:00 PM: Lunch
  6. 1:00 – 4:00 PM: Deep work
  7. 4:00 – 6:00 PM: Quick assignments
  8. 6:00 – 8:00 PM: Personal time

Technique 4: Unfocus to refocus

Nino Udovychko-career coach at Amy

“Step away every hour or two to recharge—take a walk, play with your pet, or hit the gym. Small breaks can dramatically boost your productivity and focus.”

Nina Udovychko, a career expert at Amy with the main area of expertise in Work-Life Balance

When you keep pushing your concentration, your brain gets tired, and you may feel stuck or burned out. Stepping away from your desk improves clarity. Think of it like rebooting a laptop to speed it up when running slow. A good shift would be something unrelated to work, like listening to music or doing chores. 

Consequently, you could handle the demands of work, identify sources of stress, if any, and cope with the pressure. 

Technique 5: Quarterly check-in

Nino Udovychko-career coach at Amy

“Take time every three months to assess where you are and where you want to be. Break it down into life spheres—career, relationships, health, personal growth—and see what needs adjusting.”

Nina Udovychko, a career expert at Amy with the main area of expertise in Work-Life Balance

You may be so caught up in the day-to-day that you forget to pause:

  • What is going well?
  • Where do I feel off-balance?
  • What is a step to make life better in this area?
  • Are there any habits I need to start or stop? What can I adjust?

A quarterly check-in lets you hit the reset button, track the ongoing progress, and realign your focus. By breaking it down into specific areas of life, you get a clearer picture of what needs tweaking. 

Example of quarterly check-in:

  • Career: “Did I set clearer boundaries? Do I regularly block time for focused work?”
  • Relationships: “I’ve been spending little time with my child because of extra work. I plan to delegate some responsibilities to free up my schedule.”
  • Health: “I’ve been eating junk food lately because of stress. I will aim to prepare healthy meals at least twice a week.”
  • Personal growth: “Can I dedicate an hour a week to learning about copywriting?”

Try career coaching 

A career counselor helps you build strong organizational skills while working in the office or remotely, have more control over your schedules, and beat the procrastination trap. You meet professional deadlines while making space for your personal priorities and commitments.

When work demands too much and leaves little time for you, you seek a career that supports your lifestyle. Sometimes, a job may feel unbearable, and if prioritization and other techniques don’t fix the cause, consider a change. Use your free time to focus on a job search: set clear career goals, update your resume, and apply to preferable roles. Taking actionable steps not only helps you endure your current job but also moves you closer to something better. 

With the help of career coaching, you can improve your work-life balance in a current role or a new job to stop sacrificing your personal happiness for your career. Try Amy career coaching platform for self-coaching exercises or expert guidance.

How Career Coaching Can Change Your Life Today

Posted on by by Nataliya Melnyk, Marketer at Amy

“If you aren’t happy at work, you aren’t happy at life,” they say. Whether this is true for you is a personal decision. While a job might not be the main source of happiness, it’s often necessary for a fulfilling life. Even more—an occupation can align with the individual’s passions and bring a sense of purpose if chosen wisely. But what if your work is a mix of pressure, anxiety, or financial tension? Or all three?

Given that you dedicate most of your life to a job, sometimes there’s neither the opportunity nor the energy to step back and take a bird’s-eye view of your career path to enhance. This is when a career expert equipped with career coaching techniques can step in.

To start with, what exactly is career coaching?

Career coaching is a practice that helps people define their professional goals and achieve them with a personalized approach. Whether transitioning to a new role or overcoming career obstacles to improve an existing experience, career coaching addresses various work-related challenges.

Career coaches, in their turn, can offer support by:

  • Assessing skills, strengths, and interests and setting career goals accordingly
  • Creating a tailored career plan with a strategy toward targeted positions
  • Improving cover letter and resume
  • Assisting with the interview processes
  • Navigating career transitions
  • Guiding on how to negotiate effectively for promotions, salary raises, and other benefits
The image shows a woman with notes and the text: assess, improve, and navigate in terms of career.

So, why do I absolutely need career coaching?

Today’s job market demands a high level of flexibility and constant learning. Economic instabilities and artificial intelligence lead to job displacement in certain areas and new opportunities in others. According to McKinsey research, one in 16 workers may have to switch occupations by 2030.

To keep up with the career landscape, you must know job updates and upskill. Thus, there is no better time to use career coaching services than now to ensure your productivity today and your bright future.

Let’s review the following cases.

1. You want to grow in your current role, but instead, you feel stuck and undervalued

While every job involves engaging tasks, there’s often a degree of routine and repetition. If you feel unfulfilled and exhausted due to a constant cycle of meaningless tasks, it’s time to reassess the situation and explore potential changes.

Another reason for new opportunities can be a lack of recognition at work, which hinders professional development and motivation.

How can career coaching change the situation?

A career coach will analyze your core competencies and pinpoint areas of expertise to clarify what you’re good at. Acknowledging strong sides helps communicate openly about accomplishments and expand the existing responsibilities.

With a career roadmap, you will set meaningful objectives with smaller steps to bring vision and a sense of moving on.

2. You want to change the position, but you are afraid of starting from scratch and facing financial wreckage

You are sleeping and dreaming of approaching your newly rented office, opening a door, sitting at the desk, and starting the day with your first client. The alarm is ringing, and the smile on your face wipes away. You believe that stability and safety advance pursuing passions and entrepreneurial spirit.

The “it’s too late” trap makes you question the relevance of your skills in a new field and think that you will lose your current income.

How can career coaching change the situation?

The hesitation fueled by a drastic career change requires a step-by-step plan and support. A career advisor will create a detailed transition plan with transferable skills for your new career path. You will add objectives, timing, training materials for upskilling, and other useful resources.

Though the career change might seem risky, it’s often rewarding if planned thoroughly.

3. You struggle for a work-life balance, but you lose the game

Are you satisfied with your workload and the level of flexibility your job provides? Have you ever found yourself jumping into a loop of never-ending overtime despite your best intentions? Do you find it difficult to prioritize your tasks, communicate accomplishments, and set boundaries?

Moreover, an unhealthy work-life balance and imposter syndrome often reinforce each other. Juggling excessive responsibilities and doubting your worth contributes to anxiety, procrastination, and burnout.

How can career coaching change the situation?

First, a career coach will identify the cause of the imbalance between your work and personal life. Depending on the reason, the expert can assist you with:

  • Time management and communication skills to boost assertiveness
  • Setting realistic expectations for the project
  • Acknowledging your accomplishments and establishing clear boundaries between work and personal time

To sum up, what is the advice?

The job should primarily reflect your lifestyle and promote positive thoughts. A mother of two, a father on paternity leave, a student graduating from the university, or a corporate worker with 15 years of experience in one field, you deserve to work at whatever pace and format suits you. Try Amy, and we will help you glow and grow with any work and career path.

Your Career Success: Discover What Career Coaching Is and What Career Coach Does

Posted on by by Nataliya Melnyk, Marketer at Amy

Gartner survey finds that just 46% of employees are satisfied with their career development. 

Building a career is not easy. Maintaining a career is equally challenging. And this remains true whether you’re a university graduate or a corporate professional. Happily, the way we think about careers can be shifted for the better with available, easy-to-try tools and expert guidance. Career coaching exists to give you those tools and hand in career development. Thus, we will start by clarifying its meaning.

What is career coaching?

Career coaching is about hands-on techniques for enhancing your professional life—to be satisfied with your career, be recognized, achieve professional and financial goals, and uncover hidden potential. 

Let’s consider career coaching services a compass in the job market landscape. Here is how you can benefit from career coaching when you are lost:

  1. Align the compass with the north. Acknowledge your career obstacles: meaningless job, financial anxiety, poor work-life balance, or anything related.
  2. Orient the compass to your position. Identify your career expectations, whether setting professional goals, transitioning to a new career, or improving the workplace environment.
  3. Find the desired direction of travel. Determine a career path with interests, strengths, skills, and learning opportunities.
  4. Match your travel direction with the north. Work on a career plan, set meaningful objectives, and try coaching exercises to reflect on your approach and needs.
  5. Check your path using landmarks. Track progress on the career roadmap. Small, measured steps will eventually lead you to the targeted destination.
The image includes a compass in hand like a career navigation instrument.

At any step of finding the way, it’s natural to be uncertain, frustrated, or stuck. A certified career coach can consult, support, or fully guide you through the career path. This leads to the question: who exactly is a career coach, and why should you consider working with one? 

Who is a career coach?

A career coach is a professional who assists in achieving career goals. They work with you to overcome career challenges and tailor a unique career plan that fits your strengths, lifestyle, and aspirations. 

Here are the areas career coaches often engage in.

Preparing for a job application 

Laying the foundation is everything. The cover letter and resume must be accurate, well-structured, and capture the employer’s attention on the experience required for the specific role. A career coach ensures your application materials reflect those. 

To stand out, showcasing what impact you make at work is a must-have. A career coach offers an objective view of how much you can bring to the table, along with:

  • Crafting or refining cover letter and resume
  • Filling in the LinkedIn profile or a profile on any other recruitment platform
  • Participating in a desired job searching 
  • Preparing for interviews
  • Building or improving communication skills
  • Expanding network and valuable contacts for professional connections

Navigating a career transition

You believe you can do much more. Your current career is no longer fulfilling or aligned with who you are or want to be. You are passionate about your occupation, but professional frustration and lack of motivation started resonating. 

Isn’t it the moment to explore new horizons? 

When it comes to career change, the pressure of commitments and responsibilities might be too high to take a risk. And we understand how tough this is for you. Looking for an entirely new field, like going from corporate work to entrepreneurship or moving from one industry to another, seems promising but also scary. To clear your doubts and fears, a career counselor will aim at keeping the process straightforward, time-efficient, and certainly smooth while:

  • Assessing interests, strengths, and skills
  • Setting career goals
  • Creating a tailored career plan with a strategy toward targeted positions

Shining in a current role 

A professional career coach isn’t only about getting you hired somewhere new. They are likewise proficient in growing and flourishing your best self in a current career. 

Achieve your work-life balance

Balancing work and personal life keeps you productive, enthusiastic, and on track to reach your goals without sacrificing relationships, health, and well-being. If work consumes all your time and pushes what truly matters to the back seat, it can leave you exhausted and stuck in a cycle of endless repetition, with long-term effects if not addressed early on.

Nice to meet you, confidence

In addition to working hours, salary and benefits go hand in hand, and more importantly—the confidence to communicate when you feel underpaid or your benefits package isn’t competitive. 

Through career coaching sessions, you rediscover your worth as a professional and the value of your experience. A career coach particularly affects the picture by:

  • Guiding on how to negotiate effectively for promotions, salary raises, and other benefits 
  • Looking for training and skills-up courses
  • Fixing unhealthy work-life balance, breaking the burnout cycle, and setting boundaries
  • Boosting self-esteem and handling imposter syndrome

Working with a career coach in today’s competitive job market gives you an advantage in reaching your full potential and succeeding in your career. They are your pillow of support in times when you aren’t sure what you want to do and how to do it.

Try self-coaching exercises for your career development 

At Amy, we strive to give people as many valuable tools from our vast experience as possible.

We believe that career coaching is here for you as a practical resource for embracing a true calling, whether you are worried that you are not progressing in your career, feeling stuck in a dead-end job, or are underappreciated.

Check our library of free self-coaching exercises and be ready to enjoy long-lasting results.