As long as you're working, juggling the demands of career and personal life will probably be an ongoing challenge. But by setting limits and looking after yourself, you can achieve the work-life balance that's best for you.
What is Work-life Balance?
Work-life balance is the amount of prioritization you allocate between work, personal life, and family. It is a process that enables both employers and employees to create a balance between professional life and individual life.
Your personal life, in this case, includes your family life. A viable work-life balance urges you to distribute your time according to your priorities. However, note that time for professional activities and personal matters cannot be equal.
So, if you cannot develop an achievable work-life balance, you may be spending more time on personal interests, which will negatively impact your job.
How Does Technology Impact Work-life Balance?
Technology has a positive impact on work-life balance. It improves workplace efficiency. But since you're working from home due to the coronavirus effects, technology can help you create an in-office culture while you work from home and boost productivity.
Technology helps you work smarter by connecting with your team across borders and collaborating on projects. It will positively impact your work, increase output, and boost revenue.
Nevertheless, in some cases, technology can hinder your quality of life and the work you put out if misused.
Why is Work-life Balance so Essential?
Work-life is so essential because it contributes to a healthy working atmosphere. Also, not only does it increase productivity, but work-life balance helps to improve health. Primarily, if you establish a sound work-life balance, you will avoid workplace burnout and eradicate stress.
Indeed, research shows that the primary cause of stress is workload, standing at 46% over other causes of stress.
A stable work-life balance for employees offers the following benefits:
- Enhanced health and well-being
- Increased productivity
- Improve time management
- Personal development
- Higher focus and engagement
- Reduced absenteeism
- Improves commitment and motivation
- Boosts employee loyalty
Because work-life balance is essential for every member, here are some benefits for employers:
- Build your brand reputation
- Encourage a positive work environment.
- Get the best from your team
- Improve employee retention
- Reduced non-attendance (also works for employees)
- Increased productivity
- Higher employee engagement
- Drive more sales and increase revenue
4 Effective Ways to Use Technology to Achieve Work-life Balance
While there are several ways to use technology to improve work-life balance, we have assembled the top five that are proven to work. Applying these pointers will help you gain work-life balance, increase your motivation, and productivity.
- Cut Down on Media Consumption
One of the most surprising undertakings that undermine your time and make you less productive is media consumption. You may not notice it, but your online activities may be the cause of your lack of productivity.
According to the research, time spent on social media has been on the rise since 2012. Growing from 90 minutes daily to 153 minutes in 2019. You can see that it's not slowing down, especially now that coronavirus has forced the world into isolation.
Thus, technology can help you cut down on media consumption and balance your life. For me, I turn off social media and email notifications when working. I only check my messages three times a day. But technology can help you cut off distractions utilizing these tools while in work mode:
- Cold Turkey: This application software lets you stay out of social media for a considerable amount of time so that you can concentrate on essential tasks.
- FocusMe: This tool blocks all distractions resulting from your devices.
- Feedly: With Feedly, you can subscribe to your relevant websites and save time surfing the Internet for news and updates.
- Freedom: This software application helps you focus on the job by disabling networking on your computer for up to 8-hours straight.
These tools work similarly. They will restrain your unethical activities for parts of the day, letting you focus on what matters most.
- Use Technology that Supports You and Your Work
Finding devices that can best help you in creating a work life balance are instrumental in removing stress that comes with dis-organization and technology breakdowns. The key to using software is having technology that can support that and that is always reliable and running when required. Brightworks Energy carries a variety of products that are meant to ensure your work time is spent being effective so that you can enjoy your downtime with friends, family and personal interests and not stressing over completing necessary work that was hindered by ineffective technology.
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- Utilize Project Management Software
With many employees working remotely from home due to the Covid-19 outbreak, it can be challenging to organize your work and communicate with teammates in different time zones. But with cloud technology, you can get the job done.
Project management applications work on all devices, including smartphones and laptop computers. The tools allow you to sync documents and files across devices for easy accessibility.
Apps in this category can aid you in the following tasks:
- Take notes from anywhere on the go
- Set up a daily, monthly, and yearly to-do-list
- Delegate tasks to team members
- Create an editorial calendar
- Brainstorm ideas for new projects
- Collaborate with your team and third parties
In consequence, employees can work seamlessly on different projects on all devices across platforms and improve productivity. You can manage all tasks in one place and sync them automatically over operating systems.
Here are some of the best productivity/project management tools for your consideration:
- Trello
- Evernote
- ProofHub
- Asana
- CoSchedule
- Google Drive
Developers designed these project management and collaboration apps to help you plan, manage, collaborate, organize, execute, and deliver tasks quickly.
- Use Workflow Automation Software to Create Work-life Balance
Using workflow automation software to gain work-life balance is fantastic because it facilitates complex tasks and makes them convenient to control. Automated workflow apps can transfer information based on your operation command and application programming interface (API).
As such, the right workflow tool will simplify laborious projects and accelerate growth. You create operations and automate your work or business activities.
Moreover, the apps will integrate well with other software applications, including:
- Slack
- Quickbooks
- Google Sheets & Docs
- Facebook Lead Ads
Therefore, find the best workflow tool for your business or work and use it to create a better work-life balance.