Work-Life Balance Is a Cycle, Not an Achievement

Take a step back and ask yourself: What is currently causing me stress, unbalance, or dissatisfaction? How are these circumstances affecting how I perform and engage with my job? How are they impacting my personal life? What am I prioritizing? What am I sacrificing? What is getting lost?

Only after you take a mental pause and acknowledge these factors can you begin to tackle them.

A rational understanding of the decisions and priorities driving your life is important, but equally important is emotional reflexivity — that is, the capacity to recognize how a situation is making you feel.

Awareness of your emotional state is essential in order to determine the changes you want to make in your work and in your life.

Our priorities often shift faster than our day-to-day time allocation habits. The interviewees that described a more positive work-life balance intentionally reprioritized how they spent their time in a way that lined up with their true priorities.

One participant described how he still saw himself as a professional, but redefined that professional role to be more inclusive of other valued roles, such as being a parent.

Before jumping into solutions, first, reflect on the aspects of your work and life that could be different in order to better align with your priorities.

Are there components of your job that you would like to see changed? How much time would you like to spend with your family, or on hobbies?

Both public and private changes can be effective strategies, as long as they’re implemented in a sustainable manner. For private changes, that might mean self-imposing boundaries or turning down demands typically associated with your role.

For public changes, rather than simply telling your supervisor that you want more time off or more flexible hours, securing support from key mentors, partners, and coworkers — or even better, formally applying for a new internal position or a flexible working scheme — is likely to result in more lasting change.