Work-life Balance: Why It’s Important and How to Achieve It

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As seen in an earlier post, workaholism is directly related to burnout, job stress, and decreased health (physical and mental), but also having a conflict between your work and personal life1. Even professions where job satisfaction is high, like in music therapy faculty, work-life balance can still be a problem2. Work-Life balance is the relationship between the time you spend making money and the time you spend engaging in culture3. Enriching your work-life balance (in particular work-family balance) will consequently affect your mood, resources, performance, and well-being4. For example, getting better quality of sleep is related to having higher job satisfaction5, higher perceived control, lower workload, and lower work-family conflict6. Having a balance between work and family is also related to higher social support, higher job satisfaction, and lower work stress6. Having a conflict between work and family is related to higher job stress5 and lower job satisfaction6,7, life satisfaction, and job performance6, and job-life satisfaction8. It also predicts emotional exhaustion9, but experiencing work-life balance predicts higher compassion satisfaction11. These connections have become stronger and more intertwined over the years, particularly in the hospitality industry12.

So, how can you improve your work-life balance? Here’s a few tips:

1. Work a Compressed Work Week (40 hours a week in 4 Days or Fewer): It won’t affect your health but it will improve work-life balance12.
2. Organized Religion: Believe it or not, but maintaining a connection with an organized religion, as opposed to private spirituality, is linked to being satisfied with your work-life balance13.
3. Role Management: Lee and Sirgy (2018)14 detail four ways of achieving work-life balance (see their article for more information): a) Spend equal amounts of time and mental energy in your different roles; b) Do not have a conflict between your roles; c) Balance the demand on resources that each role requires; d)Integrate areas of low satisfaction with areas of high satisfaction. Here are their ways of doing this tip:

Behaviors: a) Be social in different areas of your life; b) Use your work skills in nonworking environments; c) If you’re dissatisfied with one area of your life, engage in an area where you are satisfied; d) Don’t let one role dominate you.

Mental: a) Mentally Combine different sections of your life if you are highly satisfied with them. This high satisfaction will spill over into areas of low satisfaction. b) Think about areas of your life that you’re satisfied with more often than areas that you’re dissatisfied with. c) See your life from a whole-life perspective: finding satisfaction in multiple areas will increase overall life satisfaction, because all areas are connected.

1. Clark, Michel, Zhdanova, Pui,, & Baltes (2016); 2. Gooding (2018), 3. Felstead et al. (2002); 4. Zhang, Xu, Jin, & Ford (2018); 5. Litwiller, Snyder, Taylor, & Steele (2017); 6. Sarfaraz, A., & Khalid, R. (2015); 7. Ahmad, Mudassir and Pervaiz (2012); 8. Kossek & Ozeki (1998); 9. Ellahi and Mushtaq (2012); 10. Bae, Jennings, Hardeman, Kim, Lee, Littleton, & Saasa (2019); 11. Deery, M., & Jago, L. (2015); 12. Bambra, Whitehead, Sowden, Akers, & Petticrew (2008); 13. Dilmaghani (2019); 14. Lee & Sirgy (2018)