Young adulthood is the point in your life where you will be faced with a ton of challenges. From being a carefree teenager, you suddenly have all these responsibilities. After graduating from University, you set out into the world to pursue the career of your dreams. You hustle and work hard to grow your professional life.
Although your 20s will be a phase of plenty of career growth opportunities, you shouldn’t forget that it’s also the peak of your youth. It’s the phase when you will meet people, experience new things, and consider settling down and starting a family. At this point, you’ll find that both your professional and personal lives will grow and change at almost the same pace. You have to report to work every morning, then you get home and have to throw out your garbage in your residential dumpster. More often than not, things will get hectic, so it’s important to find the right balance between the two.
Believe us; it’s easier said than done. The influx of tasks, busy schedules, and your co-workers relying on you will be a lot to bear. Most of the time, you might end up sabotaging your personal relationships and self-growth to meet the demands of your job. But remember that success is not only about how much money you make or what big superior job title you have. Instead, success encompasses both your professional and personal lives.
Hard as it may seem, there are always things we can do to help things run smoothly in all aspects of our lives. Here are some tips on finding the right balance between your professional career and your personal growth.
Create a well-organized schedule
Because of the volume of tasks on your plate, there’s a tendency for you to spend too much time doing trivial work. You also end up multitasking, which is more counter-productive than you think. Ideally, you should learn how to focus on one task at a time, and creating an organized schedule will help you do just that.
Listing all your responsibilities and obligations down will help you stay on top of them. You don’t have to stress yourself trying to remember tasks you have to accomplish. It gives you one less thing to worry about, further enabling you to manage your time wisely.
Learn effective time management
We’ve heard all our lives how important effective time management is. But quite surprisingly, it’s the most neglected skill. We always give in to procrastination, allowing our work responsibilities to creep into our personal time with our friends and loved ones. We multitask and neglect mindfulness in the things we do.
We need to learn how to set our priorities straight and allocate the right time for everything. To help, you can start timing yourself for each task you perform. At the end of the week, go through all the hours you logged for each task. You will be able to analyze where you spend most of your time. If you find that you’re spending too long on trivial matters, rethink your priorities and shift your focus to more important things.
Allocate time for yourself
It’s easy to spend your weekends trying to get more work done in an effort to reduce your tasks lined up for the following week. But burying yourself in work like this will quickly lead to stress and burn out. The result is you becoming more unproductive and tired.
We all need a break every once in a while. Allow yourself even just one day a week to indulge in personal self-care activities. Spend time with your family and friends. Go for a quick weekend getaway. All these are important in keeping your mental and physical health in check.
The concept of work-life balance is gaining significant importance and popularity these days. Although it’s good to be career-driven in your 20s, don’t forget that your personal health and growth is also of consequence.
