Tips for achieving work-life balance

July 2024 · 6 minute read
2023-11-18T12:30:01Z

Happy Saturday, buds. The next time you hang with a friend, try going on a nonromantic, intentional date with them. These date-like hangouts helped a reporter understand themself better and strengthen their friendships.

In today's big story, we're looking at how the pandemic has twisted our perceptions of work-life balance — in good and bad ways.

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The big story

Build a better work-life balance

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The pandemic spurred a lot of changes to the workplace. And that's impacted how people see and achieve work-life balance.

More than 60% of employees consider work-life balance a top priority in their next job, according to a 2022 Gallup study. 

Gen Zers and millennials are demanding work-life balance and asking about it during job interviews. And some are even pushing back against working a 9-to-5 schedule.

"While this has long been a top priority, its importance has increased substantially since the pandemic," Kristen Lipton, a managing director at Gallup, told me. She highlighted how people aren't just aspiring for work-life balance — they've come to expect it.

Yet, the combination of remote and in-person work that many employees have to navigate has muddied things even more. Experts shared tips on small ways to improve your work-life balance.

nadia_bormotova/Getty Images

Beware of meetings

People are spending more than double the time in meetings than before. Ryan Anderson, a vice president at MillerKnoll, told me this creates rigidity in people's schedules. It prevents people from prioritizing their personal and professional goals throughout the day.

"If your calendar is just chock-full of scheduled video meetings, you may feel much less balanced — might feel much less autonomy — than what you did even in 2018 or 2019," Anderson said.

Although most employees want location flexibility, schedule flexibility is even more important to them, according to a recent workplace study from Future Forum.

Recognize how work creeps into your life

Lipton told me that people often (and erroneously) conflate remote-work flexibility with work-life balance. But that's led to work seeping into every aspect of our lives: the dinner table, couch, and even vacations.

"Self check-ins to consider whether the work setting, style, or load are contributing positively or negatively to work-life balance," Lipton said, "and consider what we need to do to improve our situation."

Value the commute

Although studies have shown that long commutes are bad for people's mental health, a reasonable commute can be quite beneficial. It offers a physical boundary for people's work and life, Anderson said.

"It gives you a chance to process the day and be ready to be engaged and present with the people you love in the evening," Anderson told me. "Transitions and boundaries have gotten so blurred that it's helpful for individuals to reestablish them."

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