The saying Health is Wealth is used in diverse places to indicate the value of health amidst our work priorities.
However, despite the saying and the intention to take care of one’s health, many still take their health casually and are dismissed from work either way for the duration of time due to the inability to function properly and productively at work.
Our desire to succeed professionally can push us to set aside our own well-being. With so much happening at home, work, and life, how do you balance your work and health?
Work-health balance is the state of equilibrium where a person equally prioritises the demands of one’s career and the demands of one’s personal health.
Factors like; increased responsibilities at work, working longer hours, and increased responsibilities at home. Increased expenses without an increase in salary—are some of the common reasons that lead to poor work-health balance.
You need to work, no doubt; you have bills to pay, children to raise, groceries to buy, a state of comfort to acquire, and that vacation to pay for.
Nonetheless, there will always be work to do, but if you aren’t careful, you might end up jeopardising your health because of it, and to be frank, there are limitations to your productivity when you’re sick, so why not pay attention to your health as you do work?
The World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity”
The environment you live in, work hours, amount of sleep you acquire, etc. can affect your work-health balance.
Table of Contents
Here are 5 (five) tips to help improve your work-health balance
Prioritise your health
Your overall physical, emotional, and mental health should be your main concern. Recognizing the importance of maintaining your well-being, which includes your physical, emotional, and mental health is the first step to making it a priority in your life. If you’re battling an illness, don’t be afraid to call in sick at work.
Developing intentional habits like ensuring your diet is balanced, practising self-compassion, implementing daily prayer/daily meditation to help calm the mind, exercising to enable movement to be physically fit, and committing to using your paid time off, preventing illness and promoting a sound work-health balance.
Find a job you love
Working on a job you love can help you reduce stress in massive amounts as you will enjoy doing what you love. Although work is an expected societal norm, if you hate what you do, you aren’t going to be happy. You don’t need to love every aspect of your job, but it needs to be interesting and amusing enough that you don’t dread getting out of bed every morning. Working in a toxic environment can be tasking on your health especially mentally, if so, you need to get a new job to improve your work-health balance.
Set goals and priorities
The setting of goals and priorities ensures that your daily activities go smoothly without distractions. When you plan ahead to combine activities with leisure, physical fitness, and social connections, it gives you a sense of balance and prevents burnout.
Learn to Unplug
Working round the clock can be quite strenuous. When working, it can be exhausting when you realise your productivity level is low, however, unplugging in that moment is the best you could do to refresh and restart.
Cutting ties with the outside world from time to time allows you to recover from weekly stress and gives space for the creation of other thoughts and ideas. You can engage in personal hobbies like reading novels, watching movies, playing games, journaling, and writing to destress. You should not be guilty about your ME TIME, or regard it as unproductivity because it enhances your work-health balance.
Take time off
Taking time off can help you improve your concentration, reduce stress, keep you feeling engaged, and make your work feel more enjoyable. MIT senior lecturer Robert Pozen recommends taking a break every 75-90 minutes for 15 minutes.
Lunch breaks from your place of work can also be a really helpful way to take time off. This entails that you shouldn’t be eating at your desk and be working through the lunch. You can decide to have lunch with your colleagues—remember not to discuss about work, or you can take your time to enjoy your meal mindfully, or enjoy nature.
It’s a time to retract from work stress so you can also partake in short meditation or breathing exercises if your stress levels are high or experience chronic stress due to fatigue at work.
