For the working woman (or man), life is a never-ending quest of balancing your career, your personal life and, of course, maintaining a bank balance that supports your lifestyle choices. Sometimes, it does feel like a woman can’t have it all. You could have a great career and bank balance, but find yourself lacking in time and resources for your family. Or a great personal life with savings from your husband, but no career for yourself. Or everything in mediocrity. Is it impossible, then, to have it all?
Here are some things that can help you achieve this unique trio:
Prioritise
The main thing to do is to prioritise what’s important in your life. This changes as we move from our 20s to our 30s. For instance, the 20s are all about finding your footing in your career of choice, working your chops off to get to a steady level and climbing up the ranks of your job. The 30s become more about family. Your career takes a backseat briefly, till it can be revived as you enter your 40s.
At every stage, it is important to recognize your priorities and allocate the necessary time for it. Besides this, you may be presented with a variety of choices even in your priorities. Should you choose the job that pays 50% more but takes 20 extra hours per week? Or should you go out of state for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Once again, the answers to these questions lie in your priorities.
Evaluate your priorities periodically
That’s the thing about priorities--they change. And so, you should evolve your decisions around them. You won’t quite have to spend as much time with your teenager as you did with your toddler. Hence, re-evaluate every two years at least.
Schedule family time on your calendar
Try and reserve your weekends for family and friends. Bringing work home can be tempting--to get away from your workplace. But it isn’t ridding you of the work. Instead, it’s robbing your family off of their time with you. Be it your child’s musical performance or your weekly game night, be there for your family to feel connected. And hey, meet your friends too. You need adult company that isn’t work-related.
Learn to say NO
This is an important one. A lot of people just can’t seem to talk their way out of accepting extra work that isn’t in their job description. Be focussed on what you absolutely need.
Do you want to get home in time to put your kids to bed or do you want to hunt for a last-minute sitter? Just say no. The other side will learn to accept it.
Doing a one-off favour that you can afford to, does not fall in this category. Try and get the good graces you can afford. But learn to say no, too. It can take practice!
Define your time.. and don’t waste it
If you don’t manage your time, it will manage you, of course. Work-life-bank-balance is an achievable goal when you manage your time well. No Facebooking while working, stop fiddling with your phone in meetings. Keep yourself laser-focussed and allocate time for different activities and stick to it!
The truth is this--once you have kids, they kind of skew everything into being about them. But if you want a career, the only person stopping you, is you! So, with some support from your partner, the hireable support system, you can achieve work-life-bank-balance too!
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