What are the most common obstacles to work-life balance?

Here are three ways I have gotten better with work boundaries while at home: 1. I set a time limit on my phone for social media 2. I turned off all app notifications to my phone (except text) 3. I leave my phone in the kitchen at night - so it is not the last thing I look at in the evening, or the first thing I look at in the morning.

1) Excessive workload and unrealistic job expectations can blur the boundaries between work and personal life. 2) Lack of clear communication and flexible work arrangements may hinder employees from managing their time effectively. 3) Technological advancements, while enhancing connectivity, can lead to constant accessibility and difficulty in unplugging from work responsibilities

Before you even get to the obstacles, you have to have get clear on what you want and the order of importance of what you want. The next thing is quality over quantity. If you want to spend more time with your kids, being next to them whilst answering an email on the phone doesn't count. That leads me to boundaries. Block time in your calendar, if all you have is 15 min to do something that matters to you, it's still better than nothing. Take it and start building new habits

I believe it's crucial for us to establish boundaries as a means of safeguarding ourselves from our own tendencies. Specifically, I'm addressing our attachment to smart/mobile phones, which mostly remain inseparable from us. Even as we retire to bed, the habitual checking of emails or reviewing our to-do lists forms waves of thoughts in our minds that significantly impact the quality of our sleep. It's essential to protect our mental well-being from the constant influx of digital stimuli, especially during moments meant for rest and rejuvenation.

La desconexión digital es básica, porque si no nunca paramos. Aunque teletrabaje dos días seguidos apago el ordenador y el móvil corporativo.

I was horrible at this, i wanted to do it all in 8h. I have learned the hard way, that there is a huge cost attached to that. The best way to be realistic with what you can achieve in a short space of time, ie a day, a week is to block time in your calendar - don't overschedule, leave time for things to go wrong. This way you know what expectations you've set for yourself and you won't be disappointed for not having achieved the to-do list that you rationally know it's impossible to do.

Better to say no in a polite manner without thinking how the other might think or feel. I personally started planning my next day just before going to bed. It might change next day but you will have a blueprint how to proceed for the day. This includes both personal and professional tasks.

Set realistic goals One aspect of setting SMART goals is being realistic toward achievement. To set realistic goals they should be just outside your comfort zone but not unrealistic in nature. Start small and start with just one goal. Don’t be overzealous. This leads to “goal overload” and becomes more of a task rather than progress improvement.

When working with my clients, we look a lot at designing YOUR version of success. It's easy to get on the freight train of meeting unrealistic expectations if you haven't defined what's important to YOU and what you're truly working towards. Society tells it's money, status, things, climbing a corporate ladder. But when most of my clients dig into this, that not what they really want at all. It's much easier to say no to unrealistic expectations when you're not trying to live up to someone else's standards of success - that may not actually be true for you.

Los días son limitados, al igual que nuestra energía. Por eso es necesario saber dónde gastamos más energía y ver si seríamos más productivos desde otra función. Podemos hacer incluso más cosas en cuanto a número y estar más enérgicos si sabemos conducir esa energía adaptándola a nuestros ritmos. Pretender que todos los trabajadores o los miembros de la familia (según el ámbito) son iguales es irreal y forma parte de un paradigma en extinción. Marquemos objetivos, negociemos y deleguemos sabiendo dónde podemos ser más útiles. Por eso una empresa o una familia deben hacer crecer a cada miembro en la suma. Si no es así, algo va mal.

I find it's best to think of time management as energy management instead. I can achieve a lot in a focused 45 min session or very little in a distracted 4 hours where I juggle emails, multiple tasks but don't really have the right mindset to finish what I'm working on. Knowing when you are at your most productive and how to utilise your time effectively are key skills. Many people work best in the morning, but knowing yourself and how to focus and lift your energy so you can focus for a good period of time are key. Meditation, breathing exercises and a short walk are excellent ways of feeling energised. Use your calendar to prioritise the most important things for your focused time, stay on the task and be amazed at what you can achieve.

Use one app to manage your time, i have tried a lot of them and ended up sticking to google calendar because it was the one i opened the most amount of time. I colour code everything and block time, including time for me.

I am following this approach since last 2 years and found it to be super productive. Just one liner(especially for professional tasks): "Sit for a task/meeting for 25 minutes and then move for 5 minutes and if anything goes beyond 45 minutes, then move out for 10 minutes."

Time blocking is a way to manage your time where you schedule (or block off) every part of your day. To be effective, it has to be every part. Now, at first glance, you may feel this can be overwhelming as you can't possibly know every aspect of your day. It is relatively straightforward but, when done consistently, will unlock a world of time you can reclaim so you can focus our your most goals and vision. As Cal Newport, a New York Times best-selling author mentions, "a 40 hour time-blocked work week I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure."

The key here is to understand yourself and how you tick. Your unique ways of working and being. The biggest challenge I see many people face with this is they are trying to fit into other people's ways of doing things. Systems that have been created by and for other people, not them. Improving your time management and general effectiveness is deeply linked to self-awareness and then being confident in designing working rhythms that work for YOU. For example, don't 'eat the frog' in the morning if your frog is a creative task, and your best creative time is in the evening. Don't time block your calendar if you bristle against restrictive boundaries and need more fluidity in your day to do your best work.

A support system both for your personal and professional life is vital to stay afloat. Sometimes actually most times the challenges you are facing are not very unique. Others have faced them already and there are able to help you overcome them. They will shorten your learning curve and enable you achieve success faster.

Some really important things to consider relating to support is the division of labour within a partnership. Particularly those who have a family. This includes domestic labour and things that create mental load (which women often carry more of - sorry for the generalisation guys). When working on these things with your partner, try and make all of this as visible and explicit as you can. Check out the book and card deck 'Fair Play' for help with this. Then work with your partner to even things out. This can sometimes mean having tough conversations about stereotypical gender roles, work commitments, care commitments etc. Don't be afraid to challenge 'the way things are done'.

Getting support from colleagues is often easier than people think. It starts with agreeing guidelines for how and when the team will interact, e.g. no meetings after 5pm, or having an explicit rule that emails don't require an immediate response. Most of the time, the other people on the team also want to improve their work-life balance, so discussing this as a team is normally well received.

En este aspecto, no podemos victimizarnos y esperar que cambie lo de afuera. Debemos comentar nuestras necesidades, proponer nuevas situaciones y mostrarnos comprensivo con los demás. Si nada cambia, entonces lo más beneficioso siempre es soltar. Pero además, debemos cuestionarnos si somos nosotros los que atraemos esa falta de apoyo por culpa de nuestro modelo relacional. Preguntar si hay algo que podamos cambiar es siempre un signo de fortaleza y humildad.

We often think of self-care as requiring big chunks of time, which you don't have. Self-care looks like grabbing a coup of coffee when you need a break from your screen, going for a walk when you have to attend a call that doesn't require you being on screen or that you don't lead, talking to your loved ones about a deadline you have that is stressing you out, working from a different location for a day, talking to someone new at work.

Este punto debería ser el primero. Pues si la unidad no está bien, el conjunto tampoco lo estará. Cuerpo, mente y alma son prioritarios

In our fast-paced world, it's easy to forget the importance of caring for ourselves. We often put the needs of others before our own, and while that's admirable, it's not sustainable in the long run. Self-care is crucial to our ability to show up as our best selves - for our colleagues, our families, and ourselves. When we take time for ourselves, we can recharge and come back refreshed and ready to face whatever comes our way. So let's make a commitment to taking care of ourselves - mind, body, and soul - starting today.

Based on my experience, the topic of work-life balance is often viewed as a one-way street - ie, what can "I" do to improve my work-life balance. The reality is that work-life balance is a two-way street between people that work together and it only really works when there are two key factors - 1) Trust and 2)Respect for Boundaries. Trust is obviously earned but it is also derived when an employee is given "space" to work - and an employer learns to trust that there are aligned objectives. Respect for boundaries is derived from that mutually created trust. It's not possible to have one without the other - and work-life balance is achieved by constantly working to maximize these two variables.

Work-life balance is a myth Work is an integral part of life. In your early years, working hard isn't just about the grind; it's about creating leverage through knowledge, capital, and connections. This investment opens doors to balance later on. It's not about 'doing it right,' it's about living well. Focusing on work-life balance may risk you to settle for less. The goal of life is not to balance pain (work) and pleasure (life). A career is far greater than that. When done right, work creates life, not the other way around. Feeling exhausted? It's okay to pause and treat yourself. Remember, balance is a personal journey, not a one-size-fits-all formula. Let's redefine balance on our own terms. How do you achieve work-life harmony?

Most professionals live and die by their calendar appointments. But most don't explicitly schedule time for the personal things that are most important to them, especially if those things don't involve other people. For example, a lot of people would like to get to the gym more, but most don't explicitly schedule it in their calendar. When I started doing this, and viewing it as an important meeting, I started going to the gym much more often. It obviously doesn't work all the time, as important work stuff can override it, but starting with the intention of what you want to do means it is much more likely to happen.

There is something else that people forget to consider... If you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, at the first glance it's a terrific work-life balance. But as they say, the devil's in detail. We have 24 hours in a day. 8 hours taken by work. For some people, 2 hours commute to/from work is not unusual. If you need to spend 15 minutes a day ironing your work clothes, spend 15 minutes a day shopping for work clothes/shoes, spending 30 minutes a day in the shower/getting ready. We are already at 11 hours of work related time. Add to it 8 hours of sleep, and you only have 5 hours of Life. And I'm excluding a lot of other time dependencies due to characters limit here. Employees must understand their own value.

Final thoughts: Anyone can curate a plan to handle their work life balance. However, this need a dedication which almost every time shattered. Belief in self and rework again is a vital part of our life.