If you're finding it increasingly challenging to juggle the demands of your job and the rest of your life, then you're not alone!
Many people now find themselves putting in extra hours, or using technology to be on call when they're not physically at work.
These 5 Tips are relevant to both work and home situations. If you're feeling tired and overloaded, these ideas can help you:
1. Find your own balance
There are no rules. Balance is an individual thing and everyone has to find their own equilibrium. It's up to you to prioritise, make adjustments and decide what you are – and not prepared to do.
Don't tell yourself ‘I should be able to…' or ‘She/he can do it, so I ought to be able to.' And, most importantly, don't listen to anyone else telling you what you should or should not be able to do!
Pay attention to your own needs and wellbeing. Stay in touch with how you are, physically and emotionally, and listen to your intuition. If you feel you're out of balance day in, day out – then you are! It's time to look at what's going on and re-evaluate.
2. Ease off the adrenaline
Adrenaline will keep you going, but it also keeps you in a state of readiness for danger, fight or flight. It's exciting and it's productive and it feels like energy, but it isn't. You can only run on it for a short time without experiencing its downside.
Too much adrenaline for too long makes you stressed and tetchy – and wanting another high. If you continue to be in that state for long periods, it will eventually run out, leaving you with no energy, anxious, depressed or even ill.
If adrenaline is your addiction, you may need some of it to get going. That's how it starts. Then it's too easy to keep pushing yourself, never giving yourself time to come down. Sooner or later you're running on empty, unable to relax, sleeping badly and on a short fuse. These are the warning signs.
Cooling down time is as important after an adrenaline high as it is when you exercise. So do something soothing or undemanding in between the highs. Schedule some methodical, routine tasks after a big burst of work or a period of strain or activity at home.
3. Don’t be a martyr
‘I've got so much to do'. ‘I've got to do everything round here'. Do these phrases ring a bell? Do you feel put upon and resentful while at the same time hogging all the work? If so, martyrdom could become an addiction for you, pushing you to take on more, draining you physically and emotionally and raising your stress levels.
And here's the tough bit – it's ego inside out. The motivation for martyrdom, and the big payoff, is that it makes you feel important – a hero. And you think it makes you look busy and important. It doesn't. It's annoying and infuriating for people around you and it makes you look like… a martyr! Be alert to this if it's your weakness and let other people take the weight off your shoulders.
4. Ask for help
Asking for help is so often the best way out of stressful situations and dilemmas. Sometimes all it needs is for you to stop hugging the problem to yourself and get it out in the open – talk to someone.
It's not so hard to do, and on the whole, people like to be asked. That's what managers and colleagues are for! Common reasons for not asking for help are:
• Pride in your work and/or not wanting to look as if you can't manage on your own
• Not wanting to bother anyone, be a nuisance or make a fuss
• Perfectionism and lack of confidence: you're afraid to show something that isn't complete.
The answer is firstly to recognise when you need help, and secondly, to understand why you don't ask for help. Don't leave it too long – the sooner you ask, the better
5. Forget perfection
When something needs to be done, ask yourself the question: is it important that the job is simply done, or that it's done perfectly? 9 times out of 10, the answer is that it needs to be done rather than done perfectly.
Sometimes, if you’re overworked, you need to explicitly tell yourself that what you’ve done may not be perfect, but it is good enough.
A twist on this for managers – is delegation – question whether the job has to be done and finished or done your way, by you.
Proverb: “A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.”