You could genuinely enjoy what you do as a career. Or you might dislike it intensely and wish you were doing something else. Either way, no matter what you feel about your work, there will come a time when you will need to consider how to divide your work life from your personal life. If you don’t, you can find yourself working much more than you need to (and frequently for free), and your family will suffer as a result. Here are some pointers to help you maintain your two lives as separately as possible.

Establish Boundaries

One of the primary reasons your work life will intrude on your personal life, and vice versa, is that there are no boundaries. One will be prioritized over the other, to the detriment of the one that’s excluded and left behind. Having precise start and end timings can help divide the two areas of your life and make things more productive since you know you only have a certain amount of time to complete all of your tasks.

Of course, there may be occasions when you will need to work longer hours or if you need more time with your family for special occasions, but if these times become the exception rather than the norm, you can still maintain a healthy work-life balance. This can be especially difficult if you work from home, but having a separate room in your house or an office in your yard so that you can close the door and leave it all behind when you go home might help. Don’t be tempted to go back in after you’ve shut the door. You wouldn’t travel back to an actual workplace at a different location only to complete things because you had a free five minutes, would you? So don’t do anything simply because there isn’t a commute.

Disconnect

Modern technology is one of the primary reasons it’s so tricky to leave work at work. It means that we are continuously in contact with everyone, and although this has many advantages, it also has numerous disadvantages. One of these disadvantages is that it is easy to check your work emails or listen to voicemails left by coworkers requesting your precious time.

You don’t have to worry about these things if you entirely disconnect when you come home. Leave your phone in your work bag and check it just in the morning (make sure you charge it first, though). Why do you need to see what other people are doing on social media or anywhere else when you’re with those you care about?

Hire A Virtual Assistant

If you absolutely cannot stop working even when you know you should (perhaps you have just started a new business and there is no one who can help you, and you don’t want to miss out on finding new clients, for example), you could hire a virtual assistant to avoid burnout and allow you to maintain a healthy relationship with your friends and family.

A virtual assistant (VA) is someone who can take your calls, answer emails, plan meetings, organise crane hire, and do pretty much everything any other assistant can do, except that they do all this remotely. This is perfect if you own your own company and need to take some time off since, unlike leaving your answering machine on or having an out-of-office message in your emails, there is a genuine, human individual engaging with your customers.

Image Credits: Luca Bravo