#1 Trick to Immediately Improve Your Work-Life Balance
The easiest, number one way to immediately improve your work-life balance is this:
Turn off unnecessary notifications on your phone.
I’m not even sure what your initial reaction is going to be because it seems like such a foreign concept to so many people. Allow me to break it down for you a little.
Your time is your most valuable asset.
And just to be clear, your attention is equal to your time. Advertisers, corporations: they all want more of it. That’s how they eventually draw you in to spending your money with them.
Turning off notifications lessens corporate control on your life.
Studies have proven (too uninterested to link, Google it if you don’t believe me) that social media apps have been designed to release dopamine in order to cause you to check them more often. This is horrible if you ask me.
Turning off notifications means you’ll only check them when you carve out the time to do so. Not when someone else pings you.
There are numerous benefits to turning off your notifications, but I’m going to cover just a primary few. Just before I do, let’s define what makes a notification good or bad.
Definitions
Bad Notifications:
Everyone will have their own opinion, but my definition of bad notifications are ones that are either work-related or non-essential for your off time. Things like work email notifications, social media notifications, world news notifications, those types of things.
Good Notifications:
In my experience, these are things like particular group-message conversations and anything immediately related to personal interests or hobbies. Things exclusively related to off-work time.
Ultimately you have the authority to decide what is worthwhile or not. But I challenge you to turn off more notifications than you think you need to, and watch how, in time, you don’t miss them as much as you thought.
By turning off your notifications, you declare the following to yourself and to the world:
1. Your non-work time is just as important as your work time
Don’t care if you’re Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. Being off-the-clock is just as important, if not incredibly more-so, than being on the clock. I don’t know many people that would willingly choose to keep working if they won the lottery (although I do know a few).
It’s easy to slip into the mentality that if you’re not earning money, you’re not being a productive member of society. This is false. Throw this thought away and never reach for it again.
Work starts for most people as the thing we do to provide a better life for ourselves. If we never get offline long enough to enjoy that better life, what’s it all been for?
2. Your family and friends are a priority
Your friends and family recognize that you value them when you are able to host a conversation without a phone in your hand. You engage with people on a deeper level when you aren’t distracted or easily distract-able.
Talk is cheap. Telling someone you love them without showing it is meaningless. Turning off your notifications so that you are un-interruptible is an easy first step to deepening relationships.
3. Your mental health is a priority
If your brain thinks about work 24/7, you’re at serious risk of burn out and resentment. Having intentional time when you can’t be reached helps you unplug for a healthy length of time so that you are actually rejuvenated to jump back in the next day.
4. Life is more than just being online
The happiest moments of my life have little to do with a screen of any kind. They tend to happen when I’m out, doing what I love to do, with the people I love living my life with.
By turning off notifications, you set the standard that your life is worth more than work, and your life outside of being on the internet has value.
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I hope you try this out and follow up with how amazing your life is now 😉 Assuming you’re not going to remember to come back and thank me (because you’ll have unplugged and won’t be thinking about the internet for a few hours), I’ll encourage you to pay it forward.
