Life
Blog #1
What really is
work-life balance? Early in my career and in my first job, all I did was work.
I put my time in at the office every day, and then as soon as I left, I spent
more time trying to become better at it. Weekends were no different. How to
become a better employee was the only thing my brain was interested in
thinking.
But it’s only a matter
of time before the bubble bursts. For me it was about 5 years to be precise,
maybe I was on the patient side. Coming back to the point, you will tend to
start getting bored at work, snap at people for no reason and ultimately your
productivity drops. This is what burning out means. And hence the question, are
you working 24x7 and not finding any time for fun or for doing other fulfilling
things? The best way to get around this is to talk to your employer about your
free time and set the boundaries.
Regardless of whether
you work a normal ten-to-six job, the fact is that, you are done with work when
you leave the office. Sure, when you are a beginner you are expected to deliver
a bit more and sometimes emergencies happen and things go haywire and you have
to work late or on the weekends, but as you progress in your career, you work
steady hours. You are worked harder in your career in the early times because
it is assumed that you may not have a family or kids or other big
responsibilities. But it is not a good practice. It is imperative that you make
it clear about not calling you up once you leave the office because if you
concede once or twice, they’ll develop a habit of doing it all the time.
The moment you feel you
are getting burned out, go talk to your boss. But it’s always better that you
discuss this quite early when you are being interviewed itself. Let the
employer know you value your free time, because the less stressed you are, the
more productive you are during work hours.
Find some stuff to do
after work. Keep yourself busy or pretend that you are busy with whatever that
you are doing after office hours. Having stuff to do after work is good for its
own reasons, and it also allows you to give a signal that you’ll be busy and
that you cannot be asked to do anything. Hit the gym, play a sport, help out at
the local school with math (well maybe not math but something less taxing
lols). All these are great ways to exercise your brain and body, and you should
seriously consider something along these lines.
Your brain needs to be
told when to switch to work mode and when to switch to play mode. The more
number of unrelated things that you do outside of work will prepare your brain
to reboot and be fresh when you are at the office. This would take the stress
out of the stressful when you are for example attending to a client’s complaint
calls.
This will certainly
help with your on-the-job productivity as well, and it’ll make you a jolly good
fellow. Some hobbies could very well lead to new job opportunities as well. It
recently happened to me when I volunteered to teach at my Alma matar and one of
my dear professor’s almost convinced me to come and teach full time there. Now
that was very fulfilling outside of the job. Another instance was when one of
my acquaintance’s from the local Manchester United fan club tried to recruit me
to the marketing intelligence team of a leading daily here.
So try and mix up with
people who can bring the best out of you and inspire you outside of your job
too. This helps in developing new skills which can come in handy in your
present job.
To sum it all up, like
the ol saying goes, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So let’s all
try NOT to be that Jack in poem but that Jack from the Tom Cruise movie.
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