It’s another lovely day and we bring you another thrilling post on tips for balancing work and life, an exciting and yet enlightening compilation of the best solutions out there to the world’s toughest problem for career working individuals; tips that would help you balance work and life.

In our last post we talked about Kunle; how he maximally let his drive for work ruin everything else for him and how he waited too long to seek help.
His problems didn’t merely revolve around work-life balance, which is our topic of focus over the last few posts but interestingly enough, we noticed that he was also a rather unyielding fellow who like many of us, can get too stubborn to seek for help even when we are at our very worst.
OK! Enough about the terrible choices our dear friend Mr Kunle made, today, we would take the Kunle scenario and work with it to further explain ten tips for balancing work and life.
If you are like me, I’m sure you really cannot wait to hear the tips and begin to put it into practice. Great, then let’s get right into it, but first, we pick up from where we in our last post just like we always do.
The first quote was by Andrew Williamson, a smart fellow if I do say so myself and he says this, “You don’t have to make yourself miserable to be successful”. Wise words I tell you, wise words indeed. Many at the time, I have seen over and again the impracticality of driving yourself insane to meet targets, in the hope that once the targets are met, you will find fulfilment and satisfaction.
Our Quotes

The first quote is by Andrew Wilkinson, a smart fellow if I do say so myself and he says this, “You don’t have to make yourself miserable to be successful”. Wise words I tell you, wise words indeed. Many at the time, I have seen over and again the impracticality of driving yourself insane to meet targets, in the hope that once the targets are met, you will find fulfilment and satisfaction.
Students do it; they slave away all night long within the last few hours before an exam, trying to cramp into their heads all the information that they have to study, just so that they can write everything in the exam.
Young workers do it too, they save all the work editing to very last second before the deadline.
Even the big bosses do it; they let the review documents wait till the end the client pitch the assistant worked isn’t reviewed till the last minute.
A constant cycle of making ourselves miserable to be successful. Just one word on this, there is a big difference between working hard and working smart, find the difference and make the necessary changes.

In our second quote Marissa Mayer says that in our life’s journey, it is absolutely impossible to have all our deadlines met, to have everything we need but rather than continue in the cycle of slaving away at work to earn enough to get everything you want, you can get for playing the game of deciding what really matters, ordering our lives in a balanced way and enjoying the pleasures of these things that matter.what things would Kunle have done differently to balance work and life?

Tips for Balancing Work and Life
- Decide What is Important to You; For Kunle, this wasn’t outlined, we never could tell if all he cared about was work or if his family mattered too, do better than mere words, take out time to list out the important aspects of your life and carefully consider which ones matter the most.
- Re-Organise Your Life; In a Forbes article I read on balancing work and life, they urge professionals to embrace the possibilities of changes that could make your life as a career person and human being better, Do not assume like Kunle that your life routine is set in stone and you do not have any chance to make adjustments. Making structural changes to your life in a way that incorporates more healthy habits is the fastest way of reducing stress and accomplish balance.
- Resist the Temptation of Trying to Be Too perfect; Perfectionism is the strain that sucks out your physiological and mental energy, it is also the faster route to burn out and exhaustion. Rather than pursue perfectionism, opt instead to do your very best at each time, aim to be excellent rather than perfect.
- Be Honest with Your Employer; Now, while it may be smartest to do this before you even begin the job, it is still an option even if you have been working for years. Yes, there are company targets and yes, there are clients to services but you are only as effective as your mental and emotional health. Talk to the HR about balancing out your work processes, have honest conversations with your boss about how to set realistic goals that do not infringe on other priorities.
- Learn to Say No; Politely excuse yourself from tasks that are beyond your job description. Do not begin what you cannot continue and only take on what you are capable of accomplishing excellently. It is ok to say NO!
- Appreciate the Little Beginnings; Balancing work and life isn’t a day’s job, it’s a lifelong pursuit for sanity and control over all facets of your life. As you start today, the effects may not be immediate but you do not quit as a result, keep at it long enough to notice the big changes in your life.

Setting the balance with work and life is a continuous, hard but necessary work and while the little changes we are making at the moment may not seem significant enough, you should take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Then, you would agree with the belief that little progress each day adds up to big results. Join us in our next post for the concluding part of our series on work-life balance.