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Nurture your mental health with a healthy work life balance
Earlier this week we wrote a tweet tip encouraging a healthy work-life balance and it got us thinking, do we put ourselves first? Do we have a healthy balance between our working life and our personal life? After lots of pondering I decided to put together some top tips for us to check in on every now and then to make sure we keep a healthy balance.
Adequate Workload
Don’t take on more than you can handle. It is okay to say no! We all want to please our employers but think about your current workload, do you have enough time to take on extra tasks? Will you be paid for overtime if you exceed your working hours? If you are in the freelance business, often people worry about having a “stable” income, so it can be easy to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way, which is why it is more important than ever that we ask ourselves the above questions and make sure we have clear working hours that we stick to.
Be Unavailable
With the 9 – 5 job not being everyone’s normal, more and more employees are out in the field. If your fortunate enough to have a work phone you’ll find it easy to switch off at the end of the working day, but, not everyone has the luxury of having a dedicated work phone so we end up linking our work emails to our personal phones. At the end of your working day switch off those emails! We know it’s tempting to reply to an email out of office hours but before you know it you’ve spent an hour of your time doing work related tasks.
Leave work at work
It’s not uncommon to turn to those closest to us and rant about work but try to keep this to a minimum. Don’t use up your personal time complaining about work or thinking about work. Imagine you receive an email on a Friday evening about a work crisis and you decide to open the email, you will either spend your out of work hours trying to fix the problem or you will send your weekend worrying about how you will manage the crisis on Monday morning. This isn’t good for your mental health, leave work at work!
Rest
Most people don’t realise this but legally you’re only entitled to a 20-minute break if you work 6+ hours a day. Most employers are generous and allow staff an hour break which is better known as lunch. Whether you get 20 minutes or 60 minutes, take this time to switch off and rest.
Workers also have the right to 11 hours rest between working days, so, if you finish work at 8 pm, you shouldn’t start work again until 7 am. You also have the right to an uninterrupted 24 hours without any work each week or an uninterrupted 48 hours without any work each fortnight. Make sure you take the time you’re entitled too.
Long gone are the days where we woke up, went to work and came home. Maintaining a successful career in 2018 entails so much more, it’s easy to get caught up in the turmoil of trying to succeed and make it to the top. Don’t let work blindside you, its ok to take a step back and nurture yourself, make time for friends and family, have that date night or take that dream holiday!
