Life can get busy, but you have to maintain balance relationships and work even just taking into account responsibilities and commitments that come from being employed. When you add in all of the other things that end up creating your life experiences such as keeping up with friends and family, then time becomes even more limited. At least, it can certainly feel like it does. It’s not healthy to let your interpersonal relationships fall to the wayside because you were concerned about meeting a deadline for your job. Living life to its fullest means balancing work and play, or, in this case, balancing work and relationships of any kind.
How to Balance Relationships and Your Work
Various ways of balancing relationship and work are given below:
1. Balance Relationships And Work With A Partner
Obviously, everyone has different experiences with life and their relationships, and some people have very unique circumstances, such as working with a spouse while owning a small business.
In that case, it becomes even more difficult to tell when work-life ends and home life begins. Luckily, some people have shared their advice about how best to balance their work along with maintaining the sanity and sanctity of their relationship. But it is imperative to have a distinct divide between work and home.
2. Work-life balance
In some cases, you shouldn’t let spending time with friends and family mean that you miss an important deadline or fail to live up to a promise that you made to your coworkers since that can result in a domino effect of deadlines not getting met. It would be hard to argue that work isn’t important, since it likely supports you and presents you with intellectual challenges. However, you shouldn’t let your worry about missing the next career milestone make you sacrifice your time with your loved ones. It is a cliche, but it’s extremely honest, that as you get older you will likely wish you spent more time with friends and family instead of chasing professional glories.
3. Time management
In most cases, if you are organized enough, hopefully, you will not have too much conflict between work and life. Set aside time that you shouldn’t allow your work commitment to invade. It could be as simple as saying that you’ll call your parents for thirty minutes every day to just give them a quick update on your life, or it could be as big of a commitment as promising an entire evening of your time to your group of friends each month or every other week.
Keep that time reasonable, though. If you’re really cutting it close with deadlines at the moment or have an important project that is coming up, then don’t over commit to things because your friends want to hang out. They will understand if you have to decline their offer or promise to make it up to them another time. The ability to say no is important, especially when you are trying to balance everything.
4. Prioritize relationships
The time you do have should definitely not be spent on someone who you’re no longer with. So if you’re struggling to get over someone and would rather spend time with friends and family who are present, then BetterHelp may be able to offer some advice that will work for you.
However, on the other hand, the ability to listen to your friends or loved ones is also important. Listen to their concerns if they ever voice any. No one knows you better than yourself, but they can also see what your work schedule might be doing to you from an outsider’s perspective. If they say they’re worried about you or that you look tired and worn out, then listen to them and maybe take that as a sign that you’re working yourself too hard. It might be a good idea to spend more time with others instead of working if that’s the case.
Most importantly, though, do what makes you feel comfortable. You can move your schedule around slowly and bit by bit if it means you feel more confident in the changes you’re making. Instead of taking a big step and taking off an entire evening, start by setting aside an hour for calling your family and friends and just talking about things that are unrelated to work. If the workaholic in you is worried about not spending enough time or if you feel that you are neglecting work, then take a step back and reassess your schedule.
There is no limit to the number of times you can shift things around until you find the perfect balance. Try to prioritize the people who are most important in your life, and remember it is important to socialize and have some downtime. This will help you refocus and work with more enthusiasm and zeal. Keep in mind, not working on weekends or setting boundaries doesn’t make you an inefficient worker nor will it hamper your progress in life. But avoiding your friends or family for too long might sour these sweet relationships.
Also read; 6 Ideal Work-Life Balance tips