Work/Life Balance: Scheduling Time To Not Work

Today I'll talk a little about finding a better work/life balance through the simple practice of scheduling time not to work. The idea of this is to allow yourself time to properly relax, rest and rejuvenate when you're not working, rather than continuing to worry about work when you're not actually doing it! This is a simple practice I have used myself and recommended to others. I hope it helps!

Transcript

So hi there, Welcome to the session today. So today I'd just like to speak briefly about the idea of making time not to work, Or rather, Making time to not work. So normally when we have work to do, Whether that's for a job, For a university or school or something, Generally a work project that we probably don't want to do, We're more used to the idea of scheduling time to work. So I'm going to schedule an hour there to work on this, Schedule an hour there to then work on that, Whatever it is. But what I think we really undervalue in this day and age is actually time where you're not working. People see it more as you're either working or doing something else. You know, It's not working or not working. People tend not to have that kind of work-life balance, Indeed quite balanced. And so work tends to take precedent, I think, That people really forget, As I say, The value of not working. People tend not to have that kind of work-life balance quite right. And as a result of that, Like I say, I think we do end up kind of undervaluing time when we're not working. Now, Although we can sort of value time when we're not working without realising it, I think a really useful technique which I've used myself and I've sort of recommended to others and people is actually scheduling time to do no work. Now, It's useful to value not doing work generally, But I think when it's more generally, And this will make sense in a moment hopefully, When it's more general, Not doing work, We kind of reconvalue it anyway. It doesn't matter whether we're valuing it or not so much because, You know, It's the thing we're engaging in, Not working when we're not working is what we're doing. Now, This might sound a bit complicated, But let me explain. It's when we're in kind of high tension, Quite intense periods of lots of work or we're feeling overwhelmed or we're almost feeling overwhelmed. We're not quite there yet, But we're worrying about it. Okay, Periods where there's just a lot of stuff going on and it's quite overwhelming in that sense and all of this, That's when scheduling time to not work is useful because that's when you start to lose, Whether it's permanent or not, Or permanent as in permanent in the short term, Whether it's sort of altogether or not, That's when you start to lose that life aspect of the work-life balance. Work really weighs it off and you might say to yourself, Well, You know, Work's a big thing at the moment so that's naturally going to take precedent, But what needs to be remembered I think is the fact that the life aspect of the work-life balance is still important. Okay, You don't have to weigh it back to life when work is trying to take the kind of the centre stage, But it's important to remember that life is still an important part of it. So in scheduling time in these kind of more intense periods not to work, We kind of are able to not regain so much as maintain that life aspect of the work-life balance. We don't risk so much that balance flopping over to the work side and really just losing a lot of that life bit, If not all of it temporarily. Okay, So this is the thing and the reason I say this, The reason I think this is useful in this situation, It's not just a kind of on principle thing, Is because obviously intense periods of work and stuff like this are times when mental health is going to be really under a lot of pressure and stuff. And so maintaining this life aspect of the work-life balance is really, Really important for mental health, If nothing else, If not making the most out of life and stuff. And so this is why this technique can be so valuable in these periods because mental health is under pressure and because of that it's really important to remember this balance, To maintain this balance as much as you can, Even if it's weighted slightly over to one side, Just trying to stop it from really flopping. And that hopefully should be a bit of a safeguard on your mental health, On your mental wellbeing generally during these times of high frequency of work, High intensity of work and so on. So like I say, Just trying to schedule some time to not work. And in these times you just schedule an hour or two, Several hours, Whatever, Where you say I will do no work. This is the kind of practical side of it. Okay, You say I am not going to do any work. I'm not going to think about work. I'm not going to try and do work. I'm not going to try and do other things so that work is easier. No, I am going to just enjoy myself and relax at that point because if you, And this may be difficult, But if you are able to retract yourself from that kind of anxiety and that nervousness and that sort of anticipation and apprehension and so on about the work, If you are able to retract yourself from that sort of everything surrounding the work, From the work itself and everything like this, Then you are much more able to feel sort of balanced, Feel okay and stuff like this because we have this work-life balance. Okay, We're making a space, We're making a time for the life side of the work-life balance and in so doing we are making sure that we don't get overwhelmed by this sort of intense periods of work. As I say, It might be difficult to do this. You might find yourself thinking about it a lot but the main thing is that if you sort of, If you schedule this time for the life side of the work-life balance, Then it will be there to an extent. Whereas if you have exactly the same time when you don't do any work but you haven't scheduled it specifically for not doing work, Then your mind will always be going to work. You'll feel like you're procrastinating, Okay, More than being able to relax and so the anxiety of work will creep into this life aspect of the kind of work-life balance and so it will basically be forfeit, If that makes sense. The work has crept out, You're worrying about work, You're getting all the downsides of the work bit without actually doing any work and so in that respect scheduling that time for the life side of the work-life balance is really, Really important and really, Really useful, I hope anyway, For maintaining that balance even if it's just sort of loosely kind of balanced, If not completely balanced. And so like I say, I hope this kind of helps, I hope this can be helpful to you. I just wanted to sort of share it because I've been finding it very useful and like I say, I've recommended it to others. I haven't added any feedback yet so I hope it can be of use to you and please do feel free to let me know whether it is useful or whether you feel something maybe needs tweaking about it or something else. Thank you again for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.