Balancing Work & Life In The Modern Age

The idea of a work-life balance is coming under quite a bit of scrutiny at the moment, as some bosses push for a return to full-time in offices, while others have concluded that the WFH-life benefits everyone. No matter which side of the debate your workplace falls on, it’s important to recognise and respect your needs to balance the two aspects of life. This balance will of course fall in different places depending on your life and the lives of those around you, having children or care responsibilities for example.

For those who cannot work from home, or have been called back into the office on a full-time basis, it’s important to create some separation between work and life. For many, this is their commute. The commute gives time to get into the right headspace for work, to separate from all the home issues which can be shelved to be resolved later on in the day. This continues after the workday too, as professionals are now much better at switching off phones and emails after hours to actually switch off at the end of their day. When people come back from an office to spend time with their loved ones, the last thing they want is incessant pings of work issues which distract from their precious time.

For those working from home, it’s another challenge to create that separation and stop work and life from blending into each other. Some have the space to create work “spaces” so that when they’re away from their desk they switch into the life headspace. Another solution is to create a routine at the start and end of the workday, 15 minutes to meditate or read to create that separation. Others have been using clothing to set the mood, dressing in office clothes at their home workspace to keep the office feel alive and make that difference between work and life.

Creating the separation isn’t just to help productivity at work, while it does do that, it’s all about keeping a healthy balance in life. It’s about letting you focus on what you need to when you need to. It’s never a perfect solution, of course, life and work both have an amazing capacity to throw surprises in when least expected. However, by creating the best platform possible to handle these surprises we can come out of them with as little impact on both work and life as possible.

The WFH vs. office work might last a while, as different companies and sectors decide what works best for them. Something that will always be there is people doing what they can to find their perfect work-life balance. Employers have come a long way in respecting that balance, and a rise in diverse leadership has allowed variety in how bosses view it. Some sectors of course lag behind, and it's the usual suspects in finance, law, and anything corporate, but even those are beginning to show some signs of change after the pandemic forced everyone to get a taste of WFH. I’m confident, however, that with time and experience in the benefits of a good hybrid working model, even those old dogs will learn new tricks.