How To Create A Work-Life-Balance As A Medical Professional
A work-life balance entails maintaining a harmonious balance in both a person's professional and personal life.
Most times, work dominates a person's life due to various reasons, which can make them feel unhappy, unfulfilled, and even unmotivated.
The desire and pressure to be successful can sometimes push medical professionals to set aside other aspects of their lives.
Creating and maintaining a work-life balance is not only vital to your professional growth but also only contributes positively to your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.
Having a work-life balance is not always possible due to several factors, which may include:
- Demanding career
- Long shifts
- Heavy workload
- Parenthood
- Increased responsibility
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance as a medical professional requires you to manage your life in sustainable ways to ensure you are focused on what really matters while allowing you to live a fulfilled life.
It means putting effort into all the elements that contribute to your overall wellbeing, including career, health, family, hobbies, spirituality, relationships, education, among others.
To achieve work-life balance:
1. Keep Track Of Your Time
Being aware of how you spend your time is the first step to achieving a work-life balance.
Keeping a time schedule or a time log of both personal and work-related activities helps you identify tasks that consume your time.
The findings from this activity can give you a good understanding of how you spend your time and help determine whether to allocate those tasks less time or even delegate them to someone else.
2. Arrange Your Priorities
In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to become a reactor and jump on every single task that comes up.
This can quickly escalate into chaos when you lack priority and order of tasks and activities in both personal and professional life.
Taking some time off to carefully reflect on what is most important to you both at work and home can help put your life in order.
Create a list of all activities and evaluate the importance of each, then allocate time accordingly.
3. Set SMART Goals
Establish your priority list and create SMART goals with actionable items to work towards.
Ensure not to deviate from your goals by allocating time and planning your schedule as if you are doing it for an important meeting.
Be consistent and work with determination towards achieving your goals.
4. Schedule Everything
To be successful in both professional and personal life, you have to be a planner.
Your life is important, and so is your time.
Having no plan or schedule can lead to wasted time thus wasted life.
Whether with the help of an app or with a notebook, these are the required tools to transform your dreams and goals into reality.
Allocate at least 10 minutes daily to plan your activities for the day and set your schedule.
5. Set Boundaries
In order to achieve both your personal and professional goals, you need to set healthy boundaries.
Make those around you, both at home and work, aware of your limits.
Don’t hesitate to say no if they ask you to attend to something that is not within your schedule, but instead, communicate clearly the work you have at hand.
6. Take Care of Your Health
Don’t neglect your health; maintaining a work-life balance depends on you having the energy to take care of yourself as well as other aspects of your life.
Maintain a healthy diet while exercising for at least 30 minutes daily, take time off for self-care and mental health.
Neglecting your health may lead to stress and cause you to deviate from your priorities and goals, thus creating chaos in your life.
7. Take Care of Your Family and Relationships
Family, friends, and loved ones are by far the most satisfying sources of internal fulfillment.
Both areas will suffer if your job or career is impacting your personal relationships.
There will undoubtedly be times when you must work overtime.
The trouble arises when these days become the norm rather than the exception.
Your productivity and efficiency at work will really rise if you prioritize your personal relationships.
8. Schedule Time for Yourself
Work, health, and relationships should all take precedence in your life, but you should also schedule time for self-renewal.
Every day, indulge in small pleasures.
Take at least 30 minutes of "me time" that isn't interrupted.
It will improve your health and well-being, as well as your relationships and profession.
Make contact with your higher self.
Believing in a higher being or a higher power can be a rich source of inspiration, direction, and strength.
Setting aside a weekly relaxation day can also be beneficial.
9. Leave Work at Work
Develop a mental switch that allows you to flip between work and home.
It contributes to the development of a transitional activity between the two spaces.
Listening to music or audiobooks on your nightly ride, exercising at the gym, running errands, or keeping personal commitments are all examples of this.
Scheduling such activities after your regular work hours also discourages you from wasting those extra 15 to 20 minutes at the office, which can quickly turn into many more hours.
10. Instead of working harder, work smarter.
Everyone from the receptionist to the CEO can benefit from learning how to manage their time more effectively.
Adopting the appropriate mix of time-management techniques can help you reduce stress and save up to an hour every day.
Using technology to become more structured, organizing emails and voice messages, meeting deadlines, and learning to say "no" are just a few examples.
Conclusion
Even if you simply use a handful of the above tactics, they will make a significant difference in your life.
Begin by setting one specific goal, then add another.
Developing a healthy work-life balance is similar to training for a marathon or becoming a pro athlete.
To be fit and stay in shape, you must make a concentrated effort.
Those who devote themselves to this mission, on the other hand, gain significant health and quality life benefits.
Combining a good professional career with a happy personal life is possible.
If you are looking to grow in your career, consider visiting ProMed to see our wide range of certifications.