7 Wellness Habits For Improving Work-life Balance In 2023
Searching for best Wellness Habits? Then look no further. Inside you’ll find 7 wellness habits that can help you achieve better work-life balance. Explore them
ORIGINAL NOTE: https://www.loophealth.com/post/wellness-habits
Do you live to work, or work to live? This is a question several individuals in the modern workforce ask themselves.
While there’s no sure-fire amount of time you should allot to one versus the other or a magic formula for balancing life and work, the key is to find a balance where you are equally fulfilled by the duality of your professional and personal life. At the same time, you mustn’t let one aspect dominate the other and should feel excited about switching between the two when necessary.
Of course, achieving this balance with the help of wellness habits requires intentionality.
Work-life balance is not just what you do while you’re working (i.e., finding purpose in your work or doing meaningful work) but it’s equally important to have go-to methods for restoration, or finding fulfillment in hobbies to strike that balance.
This balance looks different for every individual. Our list of wellness habits everyone should practice improves both work-life balance and wellness.
What Are Wellness Habits?
Wellness habits are repeated behaviors that promote your physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual needs. They are an important component of achieving a healthy work-life balance.
Examples of wellness habits include regular exercise, healthy eating, staying hydrated, getting enough sleep, reading a book, managing stress, focusing on mental health and mindfulness, socializing with friends and family, and engaging in hobbies and activities that bring joy and fulfillment.
Adopting and maintaining these healthy habits are key to wellness and can lead to better overall health and a higher quality of life. And by prioritizing them, you can cultivate a more sustainable and fulfilling approach to managing your work and personal responsibilities.
Importance Of Incorporating Wellness Habits In Daily Life
While our culture tends to value hard work, it’s important to remember that your job doesn’t have to consume your entire life. Prioritizing self-care is not only acceptable, but it’s also essential to your overall well-being.
- Better physical health – A balanced diet, getting enough sleep, and regularly exercising helps reduce the risk of chronic diseases like certain cancers, diabetes, and heart disease, and improve overall physical health.
- Better emotional and mental health – Wellness habits such as practicing mindfulness, managing stress, and socializing with friends and family can help improve mental and emotional health, reducing the risk of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.
- Increased productivity and energy – Engaging in wellness habits can help individuals feel good, more energized, and focused, which can improve their ability to perform tasks and increase their productivity.
- Better quality of life – Prioritizing wellness habits can lead to a more balanced and fulfilling life, which can improve overall well-being and quality of life.
Incorporating wellness habits into daily life can be challenging. The struggle is real! And so, we have some practical tips on maintaining a work-life balance for you. Check them out below!
5 Wellness Habits For Improving Work-Life Balance
Promoting a healthy work-life balance means looking at the bigger picture – restoration, socializing, wellbeing, health, workload, etc.
By adopting a holistic approach that carefully balances and integrates all aspects of your life, you can nourish, sustain, and motivate yourself to be the best version of yourself, both in and out of the workplace.
Although work-life stability varies based on individual needs, health experts have shared the following tips to help you discover the balance that suits you best.
1. Prioritize self-care
Prioritizing self-care is essential for maintaining your overall well-being and quality of life. When you take care of yourself, you’re better equipped to handle the challenges and stressors that come your way.
It involves taking intentional actions to care for yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. By prioritizing self-care, you can improve your physical health, reduce stress and anxiety, increase productivity, have better relationships with others, and ultimately, experience greater life satisfaction.
Neglecting self-care can lead to burnout, decreased performance, and a host of physical and mental health issues.
Make self-care non-negotiable in your schedule. Taking the time to prioritize self-care is not a luxury, but a necessity for living a happy and healthy life.
2. Set boundaries
Whether you work remotely or from the office, stricter boundaries around your job will help you feel like you are not always on the clock. This way, you also give your body and mind time to actually relax and recharge.
Certainly, having this conversation about setting boundaries with your manager or boss isn’t exactly easy. However, it’s best to set clear expectations around your needs – like you will be unable to respond to emails over the weekend – to help clear any expectations or misunderstandings.
Loop tip: Before you have this conversation, take some time to make a list of things that both, makes your job stressful and easier. Keep in mind to list things that are within your control to change. This makes talking easier.
A licensed career and health coach, Naama Zusman has some simple tips to help set boundaries:
- Create different emails for personal and professional communication
- Keep a separate work phone, which you can turn off post-working hours
- Keep a check on time and after your clock out, keep your laptop away
- Turn off notifications on work apps when you’re off the clock, on weekends, or during vacations.
3. Prioritize your health
Recognizing the importance of maintaining not just your physical health but also your mental fitness, and emotional wellbeing is the first step to making it a priority in your life. Consider actions like:
- Carrying a water bottle to drink more water and stay hydrated
- Indulge in healthy snacking and avoid artificial sweeteners
- Do 30 minutes of daily meditation to reduce stress
- Exercise daily to enjoy the long-term health benefits of body movement
- Spend time on social connection via social media or in person
- Utilize your company’s health benefits program and wellness sessions
Not paying attention to your overall wellbeing can result in unhealthy practices like lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and more that result in you not only feeling your best but also lack of performance at work.
Conversely, taking time off from work for reasons other than physical illness can make you happier and more productive. This way, you enjoy time with your family while giving your 100% at your job. Thus, maintaining the required work-life balance.
4. Learn to prioritize
There’s no standard template to find the right work-life balance. The idea is to learn to prioritize as per your situation and needs and allocate ample time to all activities you consider important.
When you do so, it’s essential to keep in mind that there’s no perfect equilibrium. Prioritizing in will ensure you steer clear from unimportant or unnecessary tasks while better utilizing your energy throughout the day.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a popular and effective way of prioritizing work and activities. It helps prioritize your tasks based on the level of urgency and importance.
The matrix is typically presented as a 2×2 grid with four quadrants, each representing a different level of urgency and importance:
- Urgent and important (do first): Tasks in this quadrant are both urgent and important, and require immediate attention. Give these tasks the highest priority and complete them first.
- Not urgent but important (schedule): Tasks in this quadrant are important but not urgent. While they’re still a priority, they’re not time-sensitive. So, you can schedule and complete them at a later time.
- Urgent but not important (delegate): Tasks in this quadrant are urgent but not as important. You can delegate them to someone else to complete.
- Not urgent and not important (delete): Tasks in this quadrant are neither urgent nor important. You can safely eliminate or postpone them without any negative consequences.
This matrix helps you better manage your time and focus on the tasks that are most important and time-sensitive, while also freeing up time for long-term planning and essential but less time-sensitive tasks.
5. Take plenty of breaks
More and more studies prove that individuals can focus on intellectual work for a limited time only. While some say it’s 52 minutes, others say it’s 1 hour and 30 minutes. Either way, in an 8-hour workday, an individual is not productive for more than 5-6 hours, provided you take sufficient breaks.
It might surprise you to learn that taking frequent breaks helps get more done. This is because the more you work the harder it is to concentrate and continue.
Did you know why TED Talks are no longer than 18 minutes? This is because, after 18 minutes, your concentration tends to wane.
While getting up and moving around helps, you can also make use of the Pomodoro technique to be more productive.
The Pomodoro Technique
Pomodoro, Italian for tomato, is a popular time management method. It helps you improve your productivity and focus by breaking your work into focused intervals, typically 25 minutes long, followed by short breaks.
Rather than struggling against the clock, this technique helps you to work within the time you have. At the end of the day, you will feel a sense of accomplishment.
How does the Pomodoro technique work?
Step 1: Choose a task – Yes, it’s time to pick that task that you’ve been putting off for quite some time.
Step 2: Focus – One of the key skills you’ll learn from this technique is to manage distractions. Close the door, put your phone on DND, log out of social media, close emails, or do what it takes for you to focus.
Step 3: Work – Set a timer for 25 minutes, which is known as a “Pomodoro”. Try to maintain your focus for the full 25 minutes. If you get distracted, gently bring your focus back to the task. The entire time, stick to the task you’ve picked. There’s no concept of pause. Note down any distractions that appear and get back to them later.
Step 4: Break – Your session ends after 25 minutes. It’s time to take a break for five minutes. Step away from your screen, move around, stretch, or do something else that will help you relax, recharge, and clear your mind.
Step 5: Repeat – Once the break is over, start another 25-minute Pomodoro and continue the cycle of work and breaks.
Step 6: Long break – After four Pomodoros, take a longer break for 15-30 minutes. When you return, you’ll feel refreshed.
This technique helps you:
- Improve low productivity
- Do away with distractions
- Ensure you focus
- Turn zero motivation into 100% motivation
- Makes you feel energetic and not exhausted
- Better utilization of working hours
Remember, you can tweak this according to your needs. You can make sessions longer or breaks longer. The idea is to break often so you have flow and focus, mental agility without facing burnout, and ensure you complete what you’ve set out to do.
Start Small And Make Your Way To Better Work-Life Balance
Good work-life balance takes shape differently for every individual.
Ultimately, the key lies in determining what fulfilling and meaningful means to you. Once you do, you can look into your work schedule and figure out tangible changes you can make. Remember, it doesn’t have to be something monumental. Even the smallest of tweaks go a long way in helping you feel more fulfilled.
Keep in mind, as your job roles change, so will your work-life balance. So it’s important to regularly check in with yourself and re-prioritize what’s important for you. Give yourself space and time to reflect on what you need to adjust and explore resources that will come to your help to make those changes.
Loop, your health benefits partner is always there. We deliver empathetic care for better employee health outcomes. So whether it’s physical, mental, or any other issue, you can always reach out to us and find a solution that works for you.
