Daily Life

Getting the Balance Right: When Is the Right Time to Reduce your Work Hours and Increase your Leisure Time?

Many of us need to work in order to maintain a certain standard of living and lifestyle but there can often be a tipping point where you feel that you would like to create more leisure time in your life and bring about an improvement to your work-life balance.

It might take a scenario such as a medical issue like getting treatment for hearing loss that proves to be the catalyst for deciding you need some changes to your weekly routine, whatever it is, it can often be difficult trying to decide when the time is right to implement those changes.

Here are some pointers that suggest your work-life balance needs adjusting.

Mastering work-life balance.

How are you shaping up?

Working too many hours will mean that you have less time for leisure activities and that means your lifestyle and health could suffer as a result.

For instance, it is all too easy to get out of the habit of going to the gym or doing some regular exercise when you are too tired from working or there simply aren’t enough hours in the day.

If you find yourself getting out of shape because of a lack of exercise and a poor diet as a result of eating in a hurry, this should act as a warning shot that you should be making some adjustments to your current work-life balance.

Not time to catch up

Social interaction and maintaining a good network of friends and family requires regular commitment and it can really help your mental wellbeing if you enjoy a healthy social life.

It is hard to achieve that aim if you are working too many hours and if you start making excuses for not making meetups and find that your social network is shrinking, that is also a clear sign that you should think about whether you have got the balance right.

A good worker

It might potentially help your career if you are always willing to sign up for overtime but you could soon be racking up 60+ hour weeks on a regular basis, which could cause you to get stressed and suffer burnout.

The reality is that you are perfectly capable of being productive and producing quality work without having to put in so many hours.

A good tip would be to learn how to manage your time better so that you don’t have to work so many hours and can enjoy more leisure time.

How’s your mood?

Another noticeable consequence of working too hard and not having enough leisure time is your stress and anxiety levels are likely to rise, and that can cause you to develop a bit of a temper and feelings of anger as a result of being too stressed.

You might not be the calmest person, but there are still levels that you don’t want to go beyond, which means making adjustments so that you enjoy more leisure time and keep your mood positive.

If you recognize some of these classic symptoms of a poor work-life balance you owe it to yourself to heed the warning signs and make some positive changes.

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