1. ๐๐ฉ๐๐ฅ ๐๐ฌ๐๐ฎ ๐๐ง๐ค๐ข ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐ข๐๐๐ก
Earlier this year, a report circulated that a French law banned employees from checking work emails after 6pm. It wasnโt true but fitted with our notion of the French as a nation of slackers favouring long lunches, five-day weekends and plenty of slap and tickle while les rosbifs carried on working through the night. But maybe there should be a law against after-hours fielding of bossesโ emails? โIt would be impossible to enforce,โ says Leeds-based life coach Melanie Allen. โBut companies should think about productivity. Is this incessant checking of emails and social media by their employees adding to productivity or just pointless stress?”
2. ๐
๐ช๐จ๐ฉ ๐จ๐๐ฎ ๐ฃ๐ค
If youโre available 24/7 to your bossโs โ with all due respect โ increasingly loopy and unremitting demands, and youโre the kind of person who as a result gets overloaded, try harnessing the power of no. Allen advises: โIf you tend to say yes without thinking when youโre asked to do something extra, stall. Donโt answer straight away. Say youโll get back to the person asking, then use that time to think clearly about whether to say yes or no. If you want to say yes, fine. But if you want to say no, say no and keep saying it. Donโt justify your actions or give excuses. Thereโs no need to be nasty or rude.โ The Mental Health Foundation recommends that when work demands are too high, you must speak up. Your role model here might well be Eric Cantona: in the Ken Loach film Looking for Eric, he instructs a dithering Englishman on the power of saying no. Or rather โnonโ.
3. ๐๐ค๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐๐ง, ๐ฃ๐ค๐ฉ ๐จ๐ข๐๐ง๐ฉ๐๐ง
There is a body of opinion that you should work more and sleep less. It often takes Margaret Thatcher as a role model: she only needed four hours sleep and look what she did to the country! These days they call it sleep hacking โ training your mind and body to need less sleep. But that trend is all wrong, argues US academic Matt Might in his work-life balance blog. Think of it this way, he suggests: โThe equation for work is: output = unit of work / hour ร hours worked. โWork more, sleep lessโ people tend to focus too much on the hours worked part of the equation. The unit of work / hour part of the equation โ productivity โ is just as (if not more) important.โ In its advice on work-life balance, the Mental Health Foundation counsels: โWork smart, not long.โ What does that mean in practice? โThis involves tight prioritisation โ allowing yourself a certain amount of time per task โ and trying not to get caught up in less productive activities, such as unstructured meetings that tend to take up lots of time.โ Weโve all been there, wishing we werenโt stuck in the same room as a bunch of fatuous blowhards โ or, as Michael Foley puts it in his superb book The Age of Absurdity, โthe colleagues who speak at length in every meeting, in loud confident tones that suggest critical independence, but never deviate from the official lineโ.
Clearly, though, many of us are not working smart, but โ and thereโs no easy way to put this โ stupid. British productivity remains low while the number of hours we work exceeds that of some of our European neighbours. One result of this is the dismal array of statistics set out by the Mental Health Foundation: when working long hours 27% of employees feel depressed, 34% feel anxious and 58% feel irritable.
4. ๐๐๐๐ซ๐ ๐ฌ๐ค๐ง๐ ๐๐ฉ ๐ฌ๐ค๐ง๐
Imagine youโre just about to leave your workplace, possibly for cocktails at TGI Fridays, even though itโs actually Tuesday. Before you do, write a note to yourself listing outstanding tasks or any work things that are on your mind. โThen shut the diary, turn off your PC, store your message and leave it.โ counsels Allen. โFocus on the image of shutting the diary, saving the message or turning off your PC.โ If this is not possible, she recommends what she calls a stop-breathe technique. What does that mean? โTake a slow breath and acknowledge that youโve left. If you canโt do that at the office door, when youโre getting a train or bus and the door closes, imagine thatโs the end of your working day. Or if youโre in your car, sit at the wheel for a short while before you start the engine.โ
Closure is a big theme among those offering tips to a healthy work-life balance: the Mental Health Foundation says that if you do happen to take work home with you, you should try to confine it to a certain area of your home โ and be able to close the door on it.
5. ๐๐ค๐ง๐๐๐ฉ ๐๐๐ค๐ช๐ฉ ๐ฅ๐๐ง๐๐๐๐ฉ๐๐ค๐ฃ
The injunction to put work away for the day sounds fine, but hold on. Itโs surely not as simple as that. As you leave work, you realise you havenโt done something as well as you could. You turn on your heel and go back to do it right. Is that so very wrong? โWell,โ says Allen, โsome people find it very hard to let things go. I call it โgood enough versus fabulousโ. Sometimes, if youโre overworked, you need to explicitly tell yourself that what youโve done may not be perfect, but it is good enough.โ She cites the example of a woman who goes back to full-time work and finds that her partner doesnโt do the laundry as well as she used to; he just piles mangled T-shirts with their sleeves still inside out on the radiators. โBut she has to let that go because the alternative is she takes on more work when sheโs already stressed out. What Iโm saying is, donโt put extra pressure on yourself when you donโt need to โ at work or at home.โ As Netmums tells working mothers in its top 10 tips for work-life balance: โGive yourself a break. It doesnโt matter if your homeโs not immaculate and your children arenโt fed super-nutritious, cooked-from-scratch food every day.โ
6. ๐ฟ๐ค๐ฃโ๐ฉ ๐๐ ๐ ๐ข๐๐ง๐ฉ๐ฎ๐ง
โThere is also the tendency I come across where somebody will say, โI have to do everything round here,โโ says Allen. โTo feel like a martyr gives some people a great deal of pleasure โ they feel theyโre powerful and busy.โ And whatโs wrong with that? โItโs worth thinking about how infuriating that is for other people. The reason most people are martyrs is that they want the approval of others; if they realise martyrdom โ just doing all the work โ is exasperating to be around, they might stop behaving that way.โ
7. ๐๐๐จ๐ ๐ค๐๐ ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ฃ๐๐ก๐๐ฃ๐
Do you need the rush of adrenaline all the time, whether itโs at the gym, in the sack or at the coalface of paid employment? โYou really ought to monitor that,โ says Allen. โYou need to ask yourself how well your life is really going. What happens often is that those hooked on adrenaline hop from one rush to another โ from one task to another, from work to gym. Whatโs that like for your family and friends to be around? Not much fun, especially when you crash โ which inevitably you will.โ
8. ๐๐๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐ค๐ช๐ฉ ๐ง๐๐ฉ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐๐ฃ๐ฉ
โSome people are wedded to work, especially if theyโre self-employed,โ says Allen. โBut I get them to ask themselves: if work is the only thing you do, then what happens if you lose your job or if your business fails? I donโt underestimate the difficulties of putting work back in its box at a time of austerity, but I try to encourage my clients to think of it this way: for most people there will be gaps in employment. What do you do then? And what about when you retire? Sure, you may well carry on working in a part-time capacity, which I think is a good thing, but you will need other interests in life when work becomes less important.โ
Is she talking about hobbies? Stamp collecting, perhaps? โNo, that does sound old-fashioned. But we all need interests we can fall back on. We all need something we can fall back on that isnโt work.โ The Mental Health Foundation reckons that overworked people should try to reduce stress through exercise, relaxation or hobbies. Throwing darts at a picture of your boss is a satisfying way of cultivating all three de-stressors at once.
9. ๐๐๐ ๐ โ๐๐ข ๐ฌ๐๐๐ฉ
One way to avoid being incessantly available is to make it clear to your colleagues that you will reply to emails within 24 or 48 hours. โAs long as youโre reliable about replying in the end, itโs surprising how little this bothers people,โ argues Oliver Burkeman, author of Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done. Quite so, but texting is based on different parameters โ to send a text is to expect a quick, even immediate reply. But fear not, remember point two – just say no. You need to make it clear that youโre not endlessly available for work queries outside working hours. Admittedly, thatโs easier said than done.
10. ๐๐๐ฉ ๐ฎ๐ค๐ช๐ง ๐ค๐ฌ๐ฃ ๐ง๐ช๐ก๐๐จ
โYou really need to find your own work-life balance, probably with the help of others,โ says Allen. โThe important thing is to ignore the shoulds โ the shoulds that comes from other people or from you internalising othersโ mindsets. You have to rely on your own intuition.โ
We are witnessing a generational shift in our attitudes to work. Millennials (those born after 1980) are more likely than their elders to blur the lines between work and home. Some 81% of them think they should set their own work patterns. For some, that might involve virtual meetings (by Skype, for example) rather than real ones, the opportunity to work from home when they want to and, ideally, a no-recrimination clause in their contract that would be activated when they tell their boss to shove it when she asks them to work next Sunday.
Well, we can all dream. Whatโs workable is, of course, another matter.
