5 Simple Ways to Create Work/Life Harmony

Before the Covid pandemic, you complained that there was no work/life balance, and that’s when work and life were clearly defined.

Now that you are trying to navigate if you’re living at work or working from home, you can officially toss out the concept of balance. It was a myth then, and it’s non-existent now.

As a professional coach and trainer, I tell my clients that there is always a choice to create harmony between your work and personal life. 

Harmony is fluid and looks different every day depending on what’s going on in your world. Here are some ideas on how you can achieve harmony between your work and personal life:

Harmony = presence — guilt.

When you are working, be at work. Give the task in front of you your complete focus and attention without any guilt that you are not with your family.

Equally, when you are with your family, please drop the guilt about the work you could be doing. This is probably the harder one to do. If you keep playing the mental tug of war, you will drain your mental bandwidth and not enjoy either task.

Remember, it’s about quality and not quantity. There are always times when you have busier periods, and perhaps you don’t get as much time with the family. Even if you have one hour available for your loved ones, make it a quality hour and spend the time device free. No checking messages, emails or ‘quickly logging in’.

You are more than just work and life.

To create harmony in your life, you need to take a step back and see yourself as more than just work and personal.

This work/life wheel is a snapshot of what your life consists of. Consider each piece and give yourself a rating out of 10. Perhaps adventure/fun has been severely lacking from your life and has a rating of 2/10; the objective is not to try and tackle each element every day but to question how you can bring each area above the halfway mark.

The way to create more harmony in your life is by ensuring that none of these aspects is neglected for too long. If fun/adventure is missing, ask yourself what you can do about it over the next month. Perhaps it’s camping in the living room with the kids or going on a themed picnic where everyone has to dress up or wear a silly hat?

You don’t need to spend money or leave your house to have more fun. Perhaps if personal growth is lacking, you can commit to watching one T.E.D. Talk a week or listen to an audiobook?

When the elements of the wheel move into more equilibrium, your entire life moves back into harmony.

Create a To-YOU list.

The reason you may feel out of balance is that you are not showing up in the calendar.

That’s why you feel resentment about everyone else’s needs coming first. You can’t be the last item on your to-do list that gets bumped from week to week. You need to create a list that’s dedicated to you!

Are you showing up on the calendar at all? Have you carved out time for your self-care and the activities that fuel you from the inside out?

If you used to walk or meditate regularly but now feel like you don’t have time for it, it’s time to be the architect of your calendar rather than the victim of it.

If you walked into your favourite book shop, where would you naturally gravitate to? Do you enjoy tennis, baking, cooking, photography, cycling, scrapbooking- you fill in the blank?

How you schedule your day is how you spend your life. It’s time to shift these items from the ‘someday’ list to the To-You list.

Develop a time abundance versus a time scarcity mindset.

This is critical to implementing the To-YOU list. Let’s say you have scheduled a tennis lesson or an art lesson on your calendar. When the day comes, your inner critic will tell you that you don’t have time for it. How can you spend time doing that when you have so much work to do? I am sure you are familiar with this voice.

What is the first thing you think about when you wake up? Is it ‘I have too much to do, how am I going to get it all done?’. This is the time scarcity mindset.

To permit yourself to take action when your dedicated slot comes up, you need to develop the mindset of time abundance. It’s not that you have unlimited hours available; it’s changing your belief that you don’t have time for these kinds of activities or even primary self-care like exercise and mindfulness.

Remind yourself that you have more than enough time available, and by investing time into these activities, you are creating more space for yourself. Spending thirty minutes on something that energises you boosts your productivity and catapults your state from stress and overwhelm into calm confidence.

Self-care is self-leadership. By making more space for yourself, you can achieve more, not less. How can you show up powerfully when you are tired and full of resentment? By adopting the time abundance mindset, and you will create harmony in your life.

Build in recovery time.

“Rest is a responsibility” — Greg Mckeown.

The most successful people do not have less work than you to do; they are better at recharging themselves throughout the day.

If you are experiencing an energy crash in the late afternoon, perhaps you need to put your recovery strategy under a microscope.

Recovery means standing up every fifty minutes to stretch, getting a glass of water, or giving yourself an actual lunch break.

What if you reframed relaxation as a different form of productivity?

What do you do to relax? Do you know how to relax?

I define relaxation as any activity that doesn’t have an outcome attached to work. It should make you feel slightly uncomfortable because you like to attach time invested to something tangible to validate it. If you read a business book, it justifies the time spent on it.

When it comes to activities like doing a hobby, learning a new skill unrelated to work, colouring-in or simply sitting in nature, you are riddled with guilt. Let this go and make peace with the fact that rest, relaxation, and joy are valid outcomes.

Initially, it feels uncomfortable until you accept that this time will ultimately create the harmony you are craving in your day. Even fifteen minutes will offer a mental reset which is enough to change your days significantly.

Final thoughts.

The missing ingredient to create harmony is permission. These tools will only be practical if you permit yourself to implement them.

· Be present without the guilt

· Consider your work/life wheel

· Create a To-YOU list

· Develop a time abundance versus a time scarcity mindset.

· Build in recovery time

“If you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real” — Tony Robbins

Here’s to creating more harmony.

Warm wishes

Lori