Simple Ways to Maintain Work-Life Balance this Holiday

Achieving a healthy balance between work and life is a real challenge that PR professionals face on a daily basis. That balance, however, becomes even more difficult to find during the holidays. Between shopping, cooking, traveling, decorating, celebrating the holidays with your loved ones and house guests, there are many other things to be done within the short period of the holiday.

In-between all of this, there are still deadlines to meet and bills that have to be paid. In other words, you still have to work no matter how interesting the holiday looks. No wonder that 85percent of people worry about finding the time to get everything done during this period. The stress can be tremendous.

If you want to reduce stress and not have your holiday ruined, here are four ways that you can actually balance work and life:

The first step in achieving work-life balance, start by thinking about what provides you with happiness and fulfillment. Is it spending time with family and friends? Doing meaningful work? Giving back to the community? There’s no right or wrong answer here. The questions you ask yourself are merely meant to help you focus on where you want to invest your time.

After you have determined what truly matters to you, evaluate how you spend your time. Spend just a couple of days noting what your biggest time wasters are. For example, Instead of binge-watching too much of your favorite TV series, that time could be spent wrapping presents with your family, volunteering or staying ahead of your work. Whatever doesn’t align with your priorities needs to be pushed-back till everything you have to get done is done.

If you can reduce the amount of time that you’re commuting and traveling you will have more time for completing assignments and enjoying your friends and family. Here are some ways that you can achieve this goal:

• Work from home. If you don’t already work from home, then ask your boss if you can have a flexible schedule for the holidays. Even just working from home two or three days a week can free-up a lot of time.
• Online shopping. I still don’t understand why people want to fight for parking spaces and push each-other around for deals on TVs. You can do all of your holiday shopping online while in your pajamas on a Saturday morning or during your lunch-break.

You can tend to work early in the mornings and evenings so you can spend the bulk of your time with your family. Some people prefer to do as much as they can in the mornings so they can spend the rest of the day and evening enjoying holiday festivities. Typically, most business contacts are also taking breaks during this time, so the work is much lighter.

Let’s be honest here. You may start being more assertive during the holidays. This means that you need to designate “on” and “off” hours. Put yourself in a “time-out.” For instance, every weeknight between 6 pm and 8 pm can be spent as quality time with your family eating dinner, decorating the house or watching one of your favorite holiday films. Whatever you chose, add it to a calendar and stick to it. This is family time and you’re off-the-clock.

On the flipside, this means that you need to have “on” hours as well. If you work from home, then your family should know that between 9 am and 3pm you’re working. If you have an office, keep the door shut and put a “do not disturb” sign on the door. Also block out certain times, such as 8 am and 4 pm, to schedule phone calls and respond to emails. In short, create a schedule and stick to it!

Culled from Entrepreneur.com