Keeping a work-life balance is very important to employees if they want to maintain a healthy lifestyle on a long-term basis. Software developers often get overwhelmed with work and are unable to strictly divide their work from their personal lives. This only contributes to failing to maintain a work-life balance. It is common knowledge that software development is not an easy job. Developers can often get stuck in loads of work or spend hours on resolving some mistakes in the code. In such situations, they easily lose track of time and can prolong their working hours, thus shortening their personal life moments. That is why they need to keep a work-life balance that will separate their careers from their personal lives. If you are a web developer who faces a constant struggle in dividing these two things, then you must read the following guide to work-life balance:
- Lead an Overall Balanced Life
- Stop Working Overtime
- Organize the List of Priorities
- Pick the Right Relationships
- Live in the Present Moment
Lead an Overall Balanced Life
Software developers often strive to lead two separate lives – work life and personal life. The work-life span consists of hours spent working, while the personal life is contained by all activities that happen outside of work. Separating life into two parts will only cause a feeling of leading two different lives. Developers are not encouraged to do so if they want to keep a work-life balance. Therefore, they can begin by understanding that both their work and personal life go together. They need to learn how to combine them and to get the best of both worlds.
Programmers who manage to have a balanced life in all aspects will not feel the pressure of leading two individual lives. Employees often feel dissatisfied with their jobs or not entirely happy in their working environment. Part of that dissatisfaction is due to the fact that they separate the work experience from their actual lives. If they accept the work as part of their actual lives, they will feel better and will eventually achieve an overall balanced life.
Stop Working Overtime
When web developers plan their strategy for leading a balanced life, they need to pay attention to the working hours. Programmers most often spend enormous amounts of time at their offices or in front of their computers. They believe that devoting many hours to their job and working overtime will help them advance in their careers. Although working too much may help programmers in progressing with their professional development, it may also reduce the quality of their lives. Programmers need to break their daily routine and use regular breaks in their work so that they can face the obstacles that their daily tasks impose.
Working overtime only lengthens the working hours spent in an office on a daily basis, thus decreasing the number of hours that they dedicate to personal life. Therefore, software developers are encouraged to work 40 hours per week and nothing above that. The only occasion when they are allowed to make an exception is in case of an emergency. Following this rule will help developers to obtain an overall work-life balance.
Organize the List of Priorities
When trying to accomplish a work-life balance, web developers need to take control of their lives and disallow their work to consume all of their time. To do so, they need to make themselves a priority and dedicate more time spent on their personal lives. Many employees get up in the morning with the thought of going to the office and getting the work done immediately, after which they give themselves the freedom of utilizing their leftover time for personal purposes. This is a good practice for using the working time efficiently, however, it is not that beneficial on a long-term basis.
Employees need to avoid making their job a priority over their personal lives. They should direct their focus on themselves as much as they do on their jobs. They need to strive to make themselves a priority and to dedicate more time to themselves. For instance, work does not always have to come first. Employees can get up earlier in the morning and dedicate a few hours to themselves before going to work. This will not only change their list of priorities, but it will lead them towards the desired work-life balance. However, this does not mean that developers should neglect their jobs due to dedicating more time to their personal lives. They just need to learn when and what to prioritize.
Pick the Right Relationships
Software developers, just like any other employees, are struggling with keeping their life-work balance due to the great number of relationships they want to preserve. Even though having many friends and maintaining healthy relationships with them may seem like a good thing, picking fewer friendships may turn out to be better in the end. Maintaining a work-life balance includes picking the most valuable relationships and nurturing them while getting rid of people whose friendship leads nowhere. This will not only save valuable time but it will also improve the overall quality of life.
Choosing wisely the list of connections and relationships may also help developers advance in their careers and gain control over their life. Hanging with the right people may also improve the work-life balance through the improvement of the non-working life. This can be also done by aligning the professional and personal life with carefully picked relationships. The right friends may also help programmers in developing their personal soft skills, which are big assets for their career progress.
Live in the Present Moment
Employees usually cannot keep a work-life balance due to the thought of the future and they forget to live in the present moment. Developers, like other employees, most often find themselves spending hours from work and life on making future plans. Thus, they forget that life is happening now at the moment and that they should grasp any second of today, instead of waiting for tomorrow to come. However, they do not need to just enjoy the current moment and have no responsibility whatsoever, but they need to enjoy life as well. That is why keeping a life-work balance means that employees need to enjoy every moment of their lives, regardless of whether they spend it at work or with friends and family.
Sources: