How to Harmonize Your Work/Life Balance

This post is by Jesse Langley.

Maintaining a healthy balance between your work and personal life can be difficult. Modern office workers can have an especially tough time with this because work can often occupy a sort of no man’s land between the two.

When you begin taking work home with you, the line between recreation and work begins to blur. Taking occasional breaks from the laptop and the television can actually improve your work performance and help keep you sane.

Unplug more often

It’s easy to lose track of how much time you’re spending online. We typically spend a large chunk of our day in front of the computer only to get home and fire up the laptop again.

The next thing you know, the evening has flown by and you’ve spent most of your day at a computer. Facebook newsfeeds, CNN, and BBC apps giving you updates on your iPad while you’re working on your laptop can easily take over your free time.

Setting aside some technology-free time can help you detox from the constant barrage of email and social media status updates.

When we’re not careful, heavy social media use could be impacting us in other ways as well. The tendency to tweet and post Facebook status updates constantly often causes us to be less than perfectly thoughtful about how and what we’re communicating.

Researchers suspect that heavy texting can change the way that some high school students process and deliver information when engaging in writing assignments. Communicating only through brief tweets and status updates may result in more difficulty expressing complex thoughts and ideas when writing.

What to do with your new-found free time

As I began to take more work home, my personal recreational activities started to suffer. I had previously been a heavy reader and always ran at least three times a week. But as I spent more time with my laptop and iPad, I read and ran with less regularity until finally I was doing neither.

But more time spent working doesn’t always equal better work efficiency. Stepping away from your desk and going out for a brisk run does more than simply burn calories and keep you in shape. Exercise elevates endorphins in the brain and enhances a sense of well-being and positive outlook on life. This can translate into better work performance and task execution.

Reading works in several ways to benefit your work life as well. In addition to being a great way to discover new ideas and perspectives, reading also doesn’t turn the reader into a passive recipient of information like watching television tends to do. Reading a good book is often the exact opposite of our multi-tasking methods of modern work. Being able to focus on one thing completely is relaxing and rejuvenating. Reading frequently helps me get back to developing thoughts more thoroughly and working with fewer distractions when I get back to work.

Schedule your reading and exercise breaks

If you don’t make a point of scheduling time for your exercise and reading you’re likely to procrastinate or end up skipping it entirely. Be sure to start slow and ratchet things up as you get into a good routine. Exercise at least three times a week if you can manage it. Find a form of exercise that you enjoy and you’ll be more likely to stick with it.

The same goes for reading. It doesn’t matter as much what you read, just that you’re reading. It doesn’t have to be highbrow literature to be beneficial. Try to find an hour a day to read. Once you’ve incorporated an exercise and reading routine into your daily activities you’ll likely feel that your life is a little better balanced.

Jesse Langley lives near Chicago. He divides his time among work, writing and family life. He has a keen interest in blogging and social media and is an advocate for online training he also writes for www.professionalintern.com.