As workers struggle to find harmony between professional and personal priorities, fingers of blame are pointing towards our mobile devices, which are deemed the cause this ’24-hour working’ era.
A study by the OECD Better Life Index revealed that full-time employees in South Africa are working fifty hours or more a week. This means they are not devoting enough time to their personal care, such as sleeping, eating and spending quality time with loved ones. OECD suggest this lack of flexibility can: “impair personal health, jeopardise safety and increase stress.”
As work pressures rise, employees are struggling to switch off due to the constantly updating inbox in their pocket. BT Customer Experience Futurologist, Nicola Millard, said: “These devices behave like a three year-old stamping their feet in a tantrum in a digital sense — they flash, buzz and beep and we are compelled to look.”
If other people are logged in and sending emails at 11pm, does that mean you should be too? This power struggle has cast a barrier between checking emails and making quality, family memories.
But, before we completely discard modern technology, we need to look at ways these devices can work to our advantage when it comes to the work-life balance. Our digital companions are completely under our command. With the right mindset, harnessing the planning capabilities of these digital tools may be the answer to all our work-life management prayers.
Plan for personal and professional tasks
Contrary to popular belief, you do not have two separate professional and personal lives. You have one life with aspects of both elements integrated into it. David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ theory says regardless of which element a task comes from, it will need “Physical RAM” from your brain. Its origin, work or personal, does not determine its effort or importance.
Don’t let your devices overwhelm you with a constant stream of work. Use a visual tool to organise your current and upcoming priorities. Professional and personal tasks can flow seamlessly together as one coherent stream of plans. Setting tasks provides clear direction to a desired goal, whilst enhancing productivity by releasing a feeling of satisfaction when ticking off a completed task. The convenience of having this in your hand throughout the day, means there’s no excuse to lose direction.
Deadlines to get you home on time
Deadline setting is a key attribute to efficient time management. Parkinson’s Law suggests: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” The theory says filling a task into a long time-frame can make it unnecessarily daunting. By sticking to tight deadlines, tasks are forced to be simplified. This means your working day will end on time, leaving you with time to completely switch-off without work pressures seeping into your homelife.
Unlike paper diaries, our devices can contain software intelligently programmed to remind us of important deadlines, meetings and even birthdays (guilty!) with enough time to prepare ourselves. Convenient digital devices allow deadlines to be set instantly and to put tasks into motion swiftly. Use a tool that allows you to track your progress throughout, making sure you stay on top of your projects.
Time wastage will reduce when deadlines are organised depending on importance and urgency. By working smarter, rather than harder and completing tasks efficiently, more time is left for the important things in life.
Consider the cloud
A new wave of cloud technology has tackled the Parton philosophy, suggesting that working nine-to-five isn’t necessarily a way to make a livin’. Remote working allows individuals to take on tasks at home, boosting the power of ‘virtual teams’ and sharing achievements of the work produced, rather than how many hours have been punched in a clock.
The e-commerce and digital marketing service provider Visualsoft has implemented flexible remote working into its staff’s lifestyles. In an interview with ChronicleLive, chief executive of the company Dean Benson says: “As individuals are getting the job done, they can make the most of the time off. They can work hours that suit them, they can work from home and they can, on occasions, work from our other offices around the UK.”
For people juggling work with professional commitments, the dawn of remote working is a dream come true. Reducing unnecessary time spent in the office allows workers to take on projects at a time and location which suits them, and their close ones. Despite the individuals of a workforce possibly tackling projects at different hours, collaborative digital tools allow them to stay connected and productive.
Give in to self-TLC
Many psychologists have studied the benefits of solitude. They suggest displacing ourselves from a situation can allow us to have an outside view and clear scope of our situation within it. Daily ‘me’ time allows you to compose your train of thought and can put important decisions into perspective.
As well as your gateway to work projects from an outside location, your device as a means to reserve a time block can be your escape from workplace stress. No matter what task is the highest priority, your mental well-being is the most important project and should not be neglected. A clear scope of current priorities on your convenient mobile companion, can lighten the heavy weight of living. Your life includes elements from work and life priorities, in different doses. Once you understand and implement this, you can pave the way to a brighter, happier and healthier lifestyle for you and your family.