3 Ways to Find Work-Life Balance in Your New Normal

You want to find the right work-life balance — but balance too often implies separating work and life into equal halves, which is nearly impossible to do in an age where they so easily bleed into one another. Who hasn’t booked a vacation from the office, or conversely, responded to a work email on vacation?

The recent shift to remote work has made it even more difficult to keep your personal and professional selves separate. You can no longer rely on a commute or the confines of office walls to divide your lives into parts. If this is really the new normal, your wellness relies on throwing away the notion of life and work as separate halves.

How to Leave the Office When Your Office Is Your Home

Remember that movie Groundhog Day? Where Bill Murray experiences the same day over and over and over and heartwarming hilarity ensues? Working from home can feel like a lot like that (minus the heartwarming hilarity). The hours meld together because there’s no natural divider to separate work time from personal time.

Maybe that’s ok with you. There are plenty of people who prefer to blend their work and personal lives. The type who walk away from their laptop before five o’clock, then are perfectly happy to answer emails from their phone while they make dinner. These folks are known as “work-life integrators”. But many others, myself included, need to feel like they’ve left work for the day before they can relax. We’re known as “work-life segmentors.”