Beat the burnout – and make more time for the activities and people that matter most to you! If you’re finding it more challenging than ever to juggle the demands of your job and the rest of your life, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Many people are putting in extra hours or using their smart phones to be on call when they’re not physically at work. Even if you don’t have much control over the hours you have to work, you can ask yourself – “In what other ways am I bringing greater enjoyment into my life?” Focus your time and attention on things you can control.

Read these tips for maintaining a successful balance between your professional and personal lives and get ready to enjoy the holidays – without obsessing over the work you left behind!

1. Plan Ahead. Effective prior planning can really help to remove some stress from your plate. The more you achieve now, the less you’ll need to worry about when the holiday season is actually here. Prioritise all the tasks/ projects/ assignments you have in the next couple of months based on their deadlines and priority. On a Friday night once you’ve finished work for the week and aren’t sure what else you can do – use that spare time to chip away at the things on your list.
2. Schedule Everything. For some reason we still let work take way more priority which is hardly balance. Yes, you need to pay the bills and uphold our professional reputation but you also need time to recharge, relax and decompress. Instead of using your calendar to pencil in work meetings, also mark your personal and social engagements. Things like a family movie, catching up with an old friend that you still haven’t gotten around to or cleaning your room  – you should mark them in your calendar too, on the date and the time you plan to do them. The key is just to stick to it!
3. Say “No”. Sometimes we do end up working too much, simply because we have too much to do. If your manager approaches you with a new project idea, instead of enthusiastically agreeing immediately, take some time to look at your current commitments and workload. If you have the slightest bit of hesitation, you might want to think twice before agreeing to take that extra work on.
4. Be Intentional. You might think scrolling through your emails and checking your phone in the middle of family dinner as effective multi- tasking. But you’re actually just working constantly. Even worse, these frequent work distractions are causing you to miss out o valuable quality time with your loved ones. If you want to achieve successful work/ life balance especially around the holidays – then you need to make an effort to be intentional with your time. You don’t take personal phone calld or online shop while you’re at work, so apply this same rule to your home life. Don’t allow yourself to check emails or make work- related phone calls when you should be enjoying a relaxing holiday.

Truth be told – most of you will still need to work during the holidays. Perhaps you get a few days out of the office, but it will never compare to that relaxing break you got when you were in school. Maintaining an adequate balance between your personal and professional lives is always a challenge. It can become extra difficult during holiday season, when you feel an increased desire for more personal and family time. Try out these tips to stick to all of your work deadlines, while still being able to enjoy the holidays.