Set your boundaries

A large part of achieving work-life balance can be done even before starting work itself. By recognising your own priorities, laying out boundaries for work and choosing the right company, you will be taking a huge step towards finding the ideal equilibrium even before setting foot in the office.

1. Recognise your priorities
An ideal place to start would be to find out what your priorities are in life and, by extension, in work. This is one of the most important steps and, when done properly, can make the pursuit of work-life balance far easier. Remember! Work is going to take up a major portion of your life, so spend some time to ponder these questions: What is most important to you? Work or personal time? What aspects in life can you not compromise on? Of course, this varies between individuals. To some, it can be health that is the priority, and so setting aside time to exercise daily becomes a must. Some may want to set aside time for regular meet ups with friends, pursue hobbies or even just focus on work itself. However, identifying priorities requires you to know yourself well, which might come easily to certain individuals. If needed, seek help and advice from a mentor or loved one, but remember: there is no standard template for work-life balance. What works for one will almost never work for another, and so the actual task of recognising your priorities should be done by you alone.

2. Lay out your own rules
Once you have identified your priorities, the next step is to set the appropriate rules and boundaries for your work life. Decide how much time you need to set aside and, in turn, the point of the day beyond which you switch off from work. This is important to do early on as it is very easy to get lost in your work and eventually compromise on your priorities. By laying out ground rules with regards to work life and following them strictly, you can save yourself from this danger. For example, you can set a rule that you will not touch work after six in the evening. This means no entertaining late night phone calls or last-minute emails. Or perhaps a rule to not bring home your work laptop. Once again, this will vary from person to person and in some cases other factors may have to be kept in mind, such as work deadlines, emergencies, or your colleagues, if you are working with a team. However, at the end of the day, the aim is for you to have control over your own time.

3. Find a company that fits you
Equally important as your priorities are those of the company you work for. If one does not match the other, work-life balance becomes much more difficult to attain. Find a company that will respect your private time. It can be in the form of allowing off days on special occasions, off in lieu for overtime done, or flexibility in terms of work arrangements. Even if it is a company with long working hours, make sure it is one that has proper policies of caring for and valuing its employees’ work-life balance. A company with policies that match the boundaries that you set for yourself would be ideal.

4. Leadership and negotiation skills matter, too
With that said, just because the new business recovery plan is sound on paper does not mean that it is bound to succeed. Ultimately, the success (or failure) of the company’s recovery depends largely on buy-in from everybody involved — and employees, or humans in general, are resistant to change. This becomes particularly tricky when the entire job scope of an interim manager is to introduce and implement change at the workplace.