Many of us enjoy the perks of working from home – no tedious commute, no strict dress code, and no office politics. But for those of us who call the office our living room, and especially for remote workers who are not constrained to specific working hours, not having clearly defined time or physical spaces for us to compartmentalise our work, it can be difficult to even out the two, or even separate them in our heads. If you find yourself sending work emails at 9pm on a Saturday night, or struggling to get into a productive mindset, read on for our tips on how to make your time work more effectively for you in 2024.

We can’t magically add more time in our day, and not for a lack of trying. So how can we fix this? How can we reorganise how we spend our hours to become healthier and more efficient? We’ve conjured up a list of ways to help your work-life balance become just that – balanced. Read on to find out how.

Fail to Plan - Planning to Fail

Planning your day, week, month or even year is a great way to stay on top of things. Keeping a 2024 diary is an easy way to do this, by writing in all the big events of the year in advance; weddings, parties, birthdays, anniversaries all in one place. Jotting down these dates will give you ones less thing to remember, and seeing them listed in advance will help you better schedule time to buy presents, make arrangements for work or childcare, or treat yourself to a snazzy new outfit.To stay even more on top of things - write a reminder a week or two before the date of big events, incase you need to reshuffle your schedule temporarily to get everything done.

Keeping a journal along with a diary can help visualise your day before you jump headfirst into things and lose motivation half-way through the day, allowing you to focus on the present as well as the future. Writing down your tasks in the morning or night before can help you understand which will require the most amount of time or energy, better helping you spend your hours wisely without getting overwhelmed.

Time Management Techniques

Time management is a difficult thing to get right. We try and try to complete all the tasks we need to in a day, get the right amount of sleep, eat three square meals at the correct times, get a workout in, and still have time left over to relax and reset before bed. Work becomes overwhelming, you start to get tired more easily and exercising soon becomes too difficult to fit into your busy day. Here are some ways to effectively manage your time.

Time Blocking

Time blocking is a great way to hold yourself accountable, by dedicating blocks of time to specific tasks, as though keeping appointments with yourself. Estimate how long each task will take and assign a chunk of time to it, then try to stay as on schedule as possible throughout the day. You can also do this with meals, household tasks, and short work breaks, to make sure you don’t become too distracted doing something else, or get carried away by something minor.

Task Batching

When making meals at home, you’ve probably realised there are many pockets of time within the cooking process where you can do other things, like washing utensils as you go rather than letting the dishes pile up. The same can be said for other daily home and work tasks. You can usually find a way to clump them together, therefore saving time and ultimately getting more done in a day.

ABCs

The ABC technique is all about prioritisation, with tasks divided up by you into three categories: A for urgent and important, B for important but not urgent, and C for not urgent nor important. Work your way down the list, ticking things off as you go. If you’re someone who divides their time up well but spends too much time on the wrong tasks, or tackles them before what should be prioritised, this will help get your day back on track.

The Two Minute Rule

This time management technique works best for those who have trouble constantly completing small, short tasks. For example, making a quick phone call to confirm a reservation, taking the bins out, sending a short email, or planning your route somewhere for the next day. These are easily accomplished tasks that, if left unchecked, can pile up and cause more stress than necessary. Set a timer for two minutes, and just get it done.

Setting Boundaries

When your office is a room in your own house, the lines between work and home can become easily blurred. If possible, keep a separate room in your house that is purely for work, or if not, a desk or specific chair at your table that you only use for office hours. For the same reasons that sleep experts recommend staying out of your bedroom unless you’re preparing to go to bed, having a designated workspace in your house will help you physically and psychologically create a barrier between your job and your relaxation time. Aside from this, when you step into your home office, or sit on your ‘work chair’, your brain will better assimilate into a working headspace, as well as more easily step out of it when 5 o’clock rolls around.

Having set hours is important for any work-life balance, but even more so when you don’t physically leave an office and mark the clear end of a working day. Try to avoid the temptation of checking your emails after-hours if you can, and if you work part-time or remotely, get into the habit of choosing specific days to work. This will help better separate your ‘days on’ and ‘days off’, and will also make it clearer to your employees when they can expect a response from you, and when you’re effectively ‘out-of-office’.

However you choose to structure your time, try to stick to habit-making routine, so that not only will you use your time more efficiently, but doing so will become second nature. The more we do with the time we have, the more accomplished we’ll feel, and including relaxation and leisure time into this formula is just as important. Using these tricks, you’ll increase productivity whilst still allowing yourself time to relax and do what you enjoy, improving your overall state of mind!