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Work, career and remote life

Work-life balance

How your time and energy divide between paid work and the rest of your life, such as family, rest, health and interests.

What It Means

Work-life balance describes how your time and attention split between your job and everything else: family, sleep, health, friends and interests. Balance looks different for each person, and a split counts as balanced when you can keep it up and the people at home can live with it too. Research on recovery from work points to one ingredient worth protecting, the ability to stop thinking about work in your own time, which researchers call psychological detachment.

Try It: Count the Hours Your Week Leaves You

A week has 168 hours. Put in a usual week and see what's left for everything else. The starting numbers are an example.

Hours left in the week47
That's per day6.7

This is the time for meals, rest, people and interests. Look at where it falls in the week, too.

How People Say It at Work

  • "I need better work-life balance."
  • "I'm logging off at six, I've got a life."
  • "This job's great for balance, nobody emails at night."

The Breakdown

How to check and improve your balance (Buhata's suggestion)

  1. Track an ordinary week: work, commute, sleep, chores and caregiving, then put the totals into the calculator above.
  2. Mark what you'd change first. Pick one thing, such as a late finish or work on weekends.
  3. Set a stop time for the workday and a small routine that ends it, such as closing the laptop and writing tomorrow's first task.
  4. Protect time off from work messages where your job allows it, so you can actually switch off.
  5. Talk with your manager about what's expected after hours, and agree what counts as urgent.
  6. Check again in a month with another tracked week.

Try it today. Choose tonight's stop time and put it in your calendar with a reminder. When it goes off, write tomorrow's first task down and stop.

Signs it's tipping. Evenings filled with checkingChecking accountA bank or credit union account for everyday money going in and out, used by debit card, checks, transfers and direct deposit. See more messages, plans with family or friends canceled for work, sleep cut short to catch up, and a weekend that starts with dread about Monday.

Good to Know

The World Health Organization includes burn-out in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition. WHO describes it as the result of chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed, with three dimensions: exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism about the job, and reduced effectiveness at work. The term is meant for work only, not other parts of life. A peer-reviewed cohort study, "Psychological detachment from work predicts mental wellbeing of working-age adults," found that being able to switch off from work predicted better mental wellbeing. If exhaustion lasts for weeks or affects your sleep or health, talk to a doctor or mental health professional.

FAQ

What is work-life balance?

The way your time and energy divide between your job and the rest of your life. It's balanced when the split is one you can sustain and that works for the people you live with.

Is burnout a medical diagnosis?

The World Health Organization classifies burn-out in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition. It describes chronic workplace stress that hasn't been managed, and a doctor can check for anything else going on.

How many work hours a week is too many?

No single number fits everyone. The 40-hour figure in federal law is a pay rule: covered nonexempt workers earn overtime after 40 hours in a workweek. It isn't a health limit, so the better test is how your sleep, health and relationships hold up.

Do It in Buhata

Calendar and Reminders

Put your stop time and your days off on the Calendar, and set a Reminder for the end of each workday.

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Related Terms and Categories

  • Boundaries at work

    Limits a person sets and tells others about at work, covering their time, workload, availability and how they're treated.

  • Burnout at work

    Exhaustion, cynicism about your job and a drop in how effective you feel, which WHO links to chronic workplace stress that hasn't been managed.

  • Time tracking

    Recording how much time goes to each task or type of work, either to see where your hours really go or to keep the hours records pay depends on.

Work, career and remote life

Sources

World Health Organization, "Burn-out an 'occupational phenomenon': International Classification of Diseases" (May 28, 2019); World Health Organization, "Burn-out an occupational phenomenon" (ICD FAQ); "Psychological detachment from work predicts mental wellbeing of working-age adults: Findings from the 'Wellbeing of the Workforce' (WoW) prospective longitudinal cohort study," via PubMed Central; U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, "Overtime Pay"

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