Making Life Work For You When You’re So Busy

You can feel like everything is against you when you are forever putting out workplace fires, making big business decisions, and on top of this, you’ve got to live a life outside of work. But there’s no getting around it, we are busy, so busy, that it seems the actual act of relaxing is something we have to schedule in to make it work. But this isn’t a unique situation; far from it. We are all so busy, but this means that our life, and our relationships, friendships, and pretty much anything you can think of, will suffer. So how can we make life work for us when we are so busy, not just in work, but getting on top of pesky life admin?

Listen To Your Body

It seems that we don’t even have the opportunity to get sick any more. But we have to remember that getting unwell is our body’s way of telling us to have a rest. And it sounds counterintuitive, but we’ve got to make time to get unwell. Because if we are constantly on autopilot, pushing through everything, then we’re not giving our body the time to recuperate. This is why you’ve got to place priority, not just on your sleep, but on your health habits in general. If you find it going to the gym is too strenuous, then you have to reassess, is there something in your life that’s tiring you out? Because going to the gym should give you energy, not rob you of it. Listen to your body, and see if there’s something missing, or there’s an ingredient that you are putting into your body that’s achieving a negative result.

Work Hard To Let Your Loved Ones Know You Love Them

When we’re so busy, it’s our loved ones that can feel neglected. And while buying some flowers online lets them know you’re thinking of them, is this a worthy substitution? Sometimes we can go without seeing our true friends for months, either because we’re so busy, or because we live different lives. These little gifts are lovely, and it tells them that we are thinking of them, but we’ve got to go one step further and make it an effort to meet up. They may forever be in your thoughts, and while a text message now and again is great, maybe you should schedule a proper phone conversation? Or maybe you should book a 4-day weekend and go surprise them? You know they would love this!

Schedule Everything

This is something a lot of people do if they find that they’re too busy in everything. By scheduling absolutely every single task, life admin, as well as quality time with friends or family, this gives you control over your life. It might not sound appealing to have everything mapped out, but the fact of the matter is that you’ve already got a tight schedule in terms of your working week. But this also means as well as scheduling in the essential things, you should also schedule in the pleasurable things. Not just visits to the gym, but scheduling a chance to be by yourself, to read that book, or a reminder to relax. A handy reminder on your phone telling you to “relax and not take everything so seriously” may be all that you need.

Work Smart Instead Of Working Hard

If we are so busy with work all of the time, are we putting too much energy into it? And if we’re putting too much energy into it, but we’re not getting the results we hoped for, then surely we’ve got to rethink our strategy? Working smart instead of working hard is something that many of the big business people do now because it’s just common sense. By making the most of being organisaed and finding the shortcut to solving the problem you get a lot more downtime, but you’re also not feeling the stress as much. It’s a very simple thing, but we’ve been told all our lives that we have to work hard to get what we want. When we’re in the position where we have to work 12 hour days, and it just seems to result in us going backwards, not forwards, something is going to give. It’s far better for your sanity to be strategic in how you work, and when a task is worth investing a lot of effort in, and when it’s worth taking a step back. For example, there are people that forever leave the office at 2 p.m. on a Friday, and they may have their own reasons for this, but it might be worth taking a leaf out of their book and leaving work a couple of hours earlier so you can have some adequate downtime or do something that you want to do. At the end of the day, if you’ve done all of your work in the morning, do you need to be there in the afternoon? And in addition to this, if you find out when you work best, don’t go against it; use it to your advantage. If you work better at 7 in the morning, at least you’re getting more done before you head into the office. Everybody wins!

Remember That Work Isn’t Everything

And for all of these suggestions to make work easier, we have to remember that our working life really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. You may have a career that you love, in which case, that’s great! But if not, do you need to dedicate so much of your mental energies outside of work for something that is going to exhaust you? We spend a third of our lives working, so in one respect, we need to make it count, but if we have a job that pays the bills, we’ve got to be a bit cleverer in how it impacts our lives overall. Here’s the harsh truth, it’s not important! You won’t think back on your life and regret not working more. So why should you dedicate so much of your mental energies to this? Instead, you need to work to live, not live to work.