How Personal Should You Get At Work? - Career experts will tell you that a place of work should be the opposite of home, but most people don’t know how to separate what’s personal and public. In fact, most employees put in extra hours and then bring the job home with all its worries. It’s also the reason why some get a lack of sleep at night.
It can be a constant struggle protecting your precious personal life from the pressures of work. And it’s a battle many people are losing.
The temptation is to do the extra hours tonight in the weak hope you’ll get caught up and be able to relax a little in the morning. But, the ‘to do’ list keeps on growing — and you end up waiting behind again tomorrow.
Recognizing that you’ve allowed work to overspill into your home time is the first important issue to be aware of. It’s easy to add an extra few minutes to the end of the day. Then, you fall into the bad habit of working late every night. Once you’ve acknowledged the potential damage, you can take action to prevent the steady destruction of your home life.
Time management is an old skill, yet most people haven’t learned how to use it. It’s a true fact, though, that the better organized you are at work, the more you’ll get done. By managing your workload effectively, there will usually be less need to put in extra hours.
If you find that you’re consistently working late, it’s worthwhile checking whether your company offers time management training. Otherwise, you can research the techniques online.
The boundary between work and home is blurred with today’s technology able to plug you into your workplace at anytime, from anywhere. Unless you deliberately choose to be disconnected, you can access your job from the comfort of your living room.
Resist the urge to connect with the office when you’re in ‘home’ mode. That means switching off the cell phone and keeping the laptop powered down. Unless you’re paid to work from home, leave it alone. Unless you’re forced to be in contact with the office, when you go on vacation, don’t even think about mixing business with pleasure.
It’s essential that you keep work and home time strictly separate when it’s possible to do so but at the same time, it’s important to know your rights and when not to cross the boundaries.
