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?
- The National Institutes of Health study states that long working hours increase risks of coronary heart disease and stroke.
- According to a study by Deloitte, 63% of UK workers experience at least one symptom of burnout.
- The Work-life balance statistics in the UK show that 27% of employees feel depressed when working longer hours, and 28% believe they are less productive when overwhelmed by work.
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.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.