Let’s be real. A lot of people feel that work-life balance is a misconception. Why? Well, you’re not really balancing boundaries between your entire life and your work.
On the contrary, it feels as if you’re trying to balance your work life with your personal life. The challenge of having the capability to balance both their work and personal life in a productive and healthy manner.
This is something not many people can do. If you think this only started during the pandemic, then you’re wrong. Maintaining a work and personal life balance is not exclusive to those who are working remotely.
In fact, it has always been there since the increase in accessibility of work messages, emails, and all other information that can be accessed even after work hours. If you feel that because of this accessibility you can’t seem to create a balance, then you definitely need to cut something off.
However, you also don’t want to let down your colleagues or jeopardize a big project just because you weren’t available. Therefore, in this article, we’ve decided to share five tech tips that will help you build a better work and personal life balance.
On a side note, even if you plan on being offline at times, you should still be connected to high-speed internet such as the ones offered in Spectrum deals, in case of a work emergency.
Limit Notifications After Work Hours
This is perhaps the most effective and essential way of protecting your personal time after work – disable or limit work notifications. You can, of course, choose to customize certain chats that are important even after work hours.
When you limit or entire sale notification, you won’t be constantly bothered by your work email chiming or flashing a notification every time a new message is received, especially not when it’s after work hours.
For instance, if you use Slack, you can mute certain channels, so that you’re not disturbed. However, you can choose to allow calendar notifications if you have an important meeting that has been set to later in the evening.
The reason why you should limit notification is not just so you can have a work and personal life balance, but so that you can attend to your other needs with full priority. You should be in control as to when you should look at work emails and messages.
Schedule Work Messages to be Sent Before Time
It’s not uncommon for people to be working after work hours. That said, you’d rather not have anyone’s attention while doing so.
Of course, you don’t want to give the impression that you have a backlog. When in reality, you had some family commitment that afternoon, and hence are making up for the hours you had to be away.
If it comes across as if you’re working overtime to those unaware of the real reason, they might think that they’re also expected to work overtime or that something’s wrong. That is why you can schedule work emails to be sent before time.
For instance, Google has a feature called Schedule Send that allows you to pick the date and time you want the email to be sent. You can easily send these work emails during standard working hours.
In other words, you can write your work emails now, but only schedule to send them later. This will make things so much easier for you. You’ll need to make sure that you’re connected to the internet at all times hence the importance of a reliable internet connection. If you’re looking for one, you can contact Spectrum servicio al cliente español for more information.
Use More Than One Browser
In an ideal world, you’re likely to have a computer for personal use and the other for office work, a personal phone, and a work phone. This way, your personal online activities will never interfere with work stuff.
However, in reality, very few people have this. That said, you can still replicate it in some other way, such as using two kinds of browsers. For instance, you can use the Google Chrome browser for work purposes, while for personal use, you can use Mozilla Firefox.
In fact, you might not even need to put in all that effort as there are some browsers that allow users to create two different profiles which remain entirely separate. Let’s say you’re logged into all your work accounts on Chrome, where all the tabs opened are color-coded.
On the other hand, you can also be logged in to all your personal profiles in another Chrome window which has a light blue color scheme. This will allow you to know which window is for work, and which is for personal use.
Moreover, you can open both the windows side-by-side to view them both at the same time. However, if despite all of it, you’re not comfortable handling two piles, you can also create two user profiles on your computer.
That way, you can completely log out of the work account when you want to use your computer for personal use.
Shut Down Your Computer Once Work Ends
The most important tip for people working remotely is to create a routine for the whole day so that they can balance both their work and personal life. Moreover, creating a routine reinforces messages being sent to your brain and body.
This also applies to people who’re not working remotely. The biggest part of your end of work routine is to be shutting down your laptop, or closing it. If you have a laptop, simply put its lid down. If you have a desktop, simply put it to sleep and turn the monitor off.
Moving that overly bright screen away from your face will help you focus on something else other than work. Now, whether it’s about taking care of your kids, working out, or anything that you do in your personal time, it can be easily done without any distraction once your work device is put away.
However, if you can’t think of a routine, you can set an alarm, once it rings you can close your computer, and move from your work desk. This may sound like something easy, but having the ability to know when to stop working, is a power in itself.
Final Thoughts
Creating a complete separation between your work and personal time isn’t as easy as it sounds. But, if you want to build a balance, then it’s essential that you do create this boundary.
Moreover, working during your personal time will only exhaust and affect your productivity. When you fail in drawing a line between your work and personal life, you’ll only be affecting both these aspects of your life.
Work always has the ability to creep into your personal life, therefore, it’s important for you to know how you can balance your work and personal life. We hope the tech tips we’ve shared above will be helpful in creating this balance.