Having a balanced life is becoming more and more important and increasingly complicated to achieve. Work and private life get mixed up more and more and with smart phones, tablets and bring your own device deployment it is harder to keep things separated.
Yet it is more and more important to do this. After having gone through a medical trajectory myself it become painfully clear that we are not built for this and especially not the generation that grew up without internet and smart phones. So having to take measures I realised how complicated it is nowadays to actually separate things and it also became clear that me as a colleague of others should think what I do to others. Sending a bunch of emails on a Sunday afternoon might seem harmless but I came to realise that these emails might get read within limited time and with that might cause stress of some sorts on somebody else’s Sunday afternoon.
The most important thing is to have a plan and then try to be disciplined and the good news is that there is of course also technology aids to help you with your plan. A few things I deployed that helped me tremendously to keep my stress levels down are:
- Have working time be working time and private time be private time and a rule I use is that the you need at least 12 to 14 hours without your mind being pre-occupied with work.
- Have certain blocks in my calendar to make sure my working time is not booked solely on meetings. Before doing this I had a issue that I had no time to react on emails and as such this became an evening activity.
- If I choose to do something in the weekend, it is not emails or other collaboration activities. It would be a presentation or analysis but not involving others.
- In any work environment you can be involved in political issues and usually this arises when there is disagreement in the organisation whether something should be done or dealt with in a certain way. If this disagreement is above my head I try to stay out of it and if it is on my level I try to get to an agreement as soon as possible and not let it linger.
- Related to number 4 I try to reduce the conflicts around me and at least do not take work conflicts personal in any way.
- Practical tip, find distraction and for me it works the best to have some sort of physical exercise as it clears your mind. So a gym membership is definitely worth the money.
I have always considered myself a person that deals with stress well but for me this always meant that I was ignoring the stress that was inside. Only after applying the rules above I can say that this is actually true. Of course the rules above are my rules and this can be different for all, but more importantly I would say have a plan and make sure you also implement it. When you cheat on your own plan then don’t beat yourself up over it, just try to do better.
