It is important to know that there are many benefits to separate your work life from your personal life.
For the employees, it simply means more relaxation and less burnout. Hence, employees are able to work at a better pace, with more productivity and are able to better focus on the tasks at hand.
For the employer, it will greatly reduce the employee turnover rate because employees enjoy their work and feel that they are working for a great company. At the same time, the company will be able to build up its reputation being a great place that people wanted to work for.
Think about best companies in the world such as Google, Yahoo!, KPMG, Hilton, Marriott International, IKEA, and more. Why these companies become so successful and everyone does want to work for them? The answer is simple, they care about their employee’s well-being and this creates growth for both the employees and the employers.
When you are striving for a balance between your personal and your work life, you are living in balance. Although that it is quite impossible to achieve a true balance, but doing your best to strive for it will give you tremendous benefit, whether it is to you as an employee or as a company.
As the saying goes, “All work but no play makes Jack a dull boy”, and this is true. When your life all about work, you don’t enjoy your personal life and you don’t spend time with your family or your personal well-being, you will suffer at the end of the day.
On the other hand, if you spend too much time in your personal life and put in less effort into your work, you will feel that your life is lack of something. You will lack the fulfillment and satisfaction from work and career achievement.
This is what it means by being out of balance. And it simply shows the importance of staying in balance between personal and work life. So try to achieve the balance if possible.
If you are working for a company and are still unclear as to why you should separate your work life from your personal life, check out the benefits below.
1. More Relaxation and Less Burnout
One of the most important reasons for every employee to separate their work and personal life is to achieve more relaxation and less burnout. You have to understand that you are going to spend a huge chunk of your lifetime working, and thus, it is a marathon and not a sprint.
And if you want to finish the marathon, you must conserve your energy. You cannot sprint and use all your energy in the beginning. You must plan, organize, schedule, and take a rest.
You have to understand that taking rests and slowing down does not mean that you are lazy. It means that you are recharging to go further. People charge their phone every day, so why don’t you do it to yourself too?
By the way, there is no point to achieve professional success, become the CEO of a company only to find that you do not have the health to enjoy your success. Your physical and mental health is the most important asset you owned. If you don’t take care of your body and work 20 hours a day, eventually, you will suffer burnout and your health will deteriorate.
Extraordinary people such as Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon Hill, Thomas Edison, Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill and more, take power naps during the day?
Some people may argue that you have to sacrifice your sleep in order to achieve the success you want in your professional life. Well, maybe yes and maybe no. More importantly, those are not good examples that you want to follow.
What you want is to achieve success and at the same time, have the time to enjoy with your family, spend time for vacation, and still able to maintain good health. This is the optimum result that you should aim for.
Therefore, rest whenever you need to. When you are tired, your body will give you signal and hint you to rest. And if you continue to work, you will suffer burnout.
2. Increase Creativity and Productivity
Do you know that separating your personal and work life can make you more creative and productive?
You have to understand that our willpower, self-discipline, creativity, and productivity are greatly influenced by what we do each day. Imagine that your productivity is like your cell phone’s battery level.
It is full in the morning when you just wake up because you have fully charged it when you sleep for the night. Thus, you feel awake, driven, fresh, and energetic to tackle your work in the morning.
However, as you go through the day and work on your tasks, you use up your energy, your creativity, your willpower, and your productivity. It decreases just like your cell phone battery level.
The more you use your energy, the heavier the decision and action you take during the day, the faster you will drain your energy.
As a result, you will feel tired, hard to concentrate, your focus will become blurry, you will want to do something else rather than continue to work, and you will be easily distracted.
This is why it is important to maintain your level of energy so that you can be productive and creative most of the time. Hence, take time to rest, recharge and keep yourself fresh.
And one very effective way to achieve this optimum energy level is by separating your work from your personal life. Stop bringing your work home. When it is time to leave the office, leave. Take more time to rest and relax and to recharge yourself.
And remember, being productive is not about working more, it is about working on a task that truly matters. Some people spend their whole day working on things that produce menial result. You do not want to fall into this trap. Make sure your work is relevant and take action on the most result-yielding task first.
So if you want to be productive, creative and have the concentration to work on your goals, separate your work from your personal life.
3. Improve Overall Health and Well-being
Overworking does not only make your life boring, it will make your health suffer and your overall well-being will be at stake. You will live a dull life with only work and nothing else.
You can sacrifice a day or two to work long hours and to give up sleep, but if you try to do this for the long-term, you will have to pay for the consequences. Imagine if you give up sleep and work 20 hours a day. And this continues for the next 10 years. What do you think will happen to your health and well-being?
Yes, you may be very successful because you are so hardworking and pour in so much effort into your work. What about your health? When you choose to sacrifice your health, you will have to pay for the price.
Don’t get it wrong by thinking that you should not work hard. In fact, you should work hard, but you have to understand how to find the balance and maintain your productivity.
It is true that you need to work hard and put in more effort if you want to achieve outstanding success in life, but never to forget about the importance of keeping the balance too.
The key is to be conscious and always perform the check-and-balance. Whenever your body is giving you signal to rest, you should slow down or stop and recharge your soul and nourish your life. Whenever you feel stuck and are getting nowhere, perhaps, it will be a good idea to take a vacation and walk away from your work for a while.
By recognizing the early trigger and know when you are overdoing it, you will be able to come up with plans and solutions to prevent suffering serious health issue and maintain your overall well-being.
4. Never Miss Out Memorable Moments of Life
We have to face it, life is short and sometimes, we just don’t have enough time for everything in our life. This is why it is even more important to separate your work life from your personal life.
When you overspend your time at your work, you will miss out a lot of your personal life. Suddenly, you will feel that your parents grow older faster than you imagine. This issue will be even more obvious if you have your own family and children.
You do not want to miss out memorable moments of your life with your family and your children, right? Some events only happen once in your lifetime, and if you miss it, it will never come back and you can only feel the regret.
For instance, you do not want to miss out meaningful event in your life such as the day when your wife gives birth or celebrating your daughter’s birthday. Do you know that celebrating your daughter’s one-year-old birthday is totally different from celebrating her birthday when she is twenty?
So don’t miss out these meaningful and memorable moments in your life. Choose to spend your time wisely.
5. Enjoy Higher Growth Rate
When your work life is balanced, you will feel happier and more productive. This is why you will be able to accomplish more and achieve a higher growth rate in life. You will feel like everything is working out smoothly and you are moving ahead in life.
When you have additional free time, you will be able to spend more time on yourself. You will use your time to do things that you love. You will read books. You will play computer games. You will enjoy your passion, take a guitar lesson, cook a delicious meal, and attend a yoga class.
This will definitely improve your personal well-being and make you feel better on the inside. And when you feel better on the inside, you will be able to do better on the outside.
Achieving outstanding success in life is not about working 24 hours a day. It is about working on what truly matters and being productive by getting the right things done.
And when you have the energy, the motivation and are happy to tackle your work, you will produce better results than most people in their work life. You will experience growth and achievements.
7. Develop Passion for Your Work
Do you know that one of the main reasons people hate to go to work is because they don’t have any passion for what they do? They feel reluctant to wake up, they hit the snooze button over and over again, and they get to the office like a zombie without any clear direction.
Imagine if you are working for Google. Going to work means fun. You can rest and relax whenever you want. You are allowed to use your own creativity to work on your task and are encouraged to handle problems your own way. How does that make you feel?
Do you think you will want to go to work, or maybe can’t wait to go your workplace every day? You know the answer.
When you hate your job, it is a clear sign that you do not have a good work-life balance. Or if you go to work only to wait for lunchtime, and after lunch, you are looking forward to going off, it clearly shows that something is not right.
Find your passion through separating your professional and personal life. Stop overspending time at work and choose to enrich your personal life if you want to do better at work.
8. More Engagement and Mindfulness
According to Tower Perrin’s 2006 global survey, “Companies with highly-engaged employees had a near 52% gap in performance improvement in operating income.”
And not only that, the survey also states that “Companies with high levels of employee engagement improved 19.2% in operating income while companies with low levels of employee engagement declined 32.7%.”
When people are more engaged with their work, they will tend to put in more effort, go the extra mile, and are more committed to producing a better result for their company.
Besides, separating work and personal life allows you to develop greater control over your focus and you can concentrate better on your task, creating a mindfulness state or “in the flow” state at work.
It will greatly improve your efficiency and productivity at work, which ultimately leads to profit and greater success.
Most people misunderstand and thought that the more and harder they work, the better the result they will produce. The information above has proven that this is not always true.
When you spend a massive amount of time into one area of your life, you will suffer the imbalanced. And as a result, it will affect other areas of your life, which will eventually affect everything you do.
It may not be easy to maintain and achieve an optimum work-life balance and completely separating your personal life from your work.
Employees these days are pushed to work faster and with increasing workload. Not to mention that the accessibility to social media and instant communication also requires your attention and will distract you.
The key to success in both your personal and professional life is not to completely separate your work and life, but rather, learn to be effective and creative in striving for the balance.
References
- michaelhyatt.com/why-you-should-take-a-nap-every-day.html
- josephchris.com/benefits-of-work-life-balance-for-employees-and-employers
- psnw.us/blog/98-blog-october-2016.html
- reed.co.uk/career-advice/five-benefits-of-work-life-balance/
- pryor.com/blog/the-benefits-of-work-life-balance/
- aib.edu.au/blog/balance-wellbeing/work-life-balance-is-important/
- twrcc.co.za/Engaged%20employees%20drive%20the%20bottom%20line.pdf
- the-happiness-index.com/importance-of-work-life-balance/
- robertwalters.com.hk/career-advice/work-life-balance.html
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