Do you consistently feel compelled to work? Do you keep thinking about work after you stop for the day? Is missing a day of work upsetting? If so, you likely are living to work rather than working to live.
The inability to disconnect from your job can harm your personal life. As a result, you should strengthen the boundaries between your professional and personal activities. If you are looking to make some changes, these methods can help.
Redefine “Urgent”
You might consider every work task to be urgent and high-priority. This feeling might motivate you to complete everything on your daily to-do list. However, constantly being in fight-or-flight mode increases your stress level. These activities can lead to physical and mental health issues and burnout.
Consider your urgent, high-priority tasks from a month ago:
- Evaluate whether the tasks truly were important or if you reflexively wanted to finish everything.
- Many tasks likely could have waited until another time.
- Apply this thinking to your current and future work tasks.
- Determine whether each task is a priority.
- If a task is not urgent, schedule it for a later time.
Triage Your Tasks
Take advice from the TED Talk, “An ER Doctor on Triaging Your ‘Crazy Busy’ Life” by Dr. Darria Long Gillespie to reprioritize your work tasks:
- Red tasks are life-dependent and should be worked on immediately.
- Yellow tasks are serious but not as urgent as red.
- Green tasks are minor and can wait.
- Black tasks would have no impact and can be deleted.
For instance, say you are working on a project deadline when a colleague requests help finding a contact:
- Although both tasks are urgent, meeting the deadline is more urgent.
- Finishing your project is a yellow task that should be worked on now.
- Helping your colleague is a green task that can wait.
Use an Eisenhower Matrix for Task Prioritization
Checking off items on your to-do list provides a burst of dopamine that makes you feel good. However, this feeling can become addictive because to-do lists never end.
Knowing when to stop working is essential. Therefore, using an Eisenhower Matrix to transform your to-do list into a method for task prioritization helps determine which tasks are urgent or important and when they should be scheduled.
To create an Eisenhower Matrix:
- Take a piece of paper and draw a T to create four quadrants.
- In the upper left quadrant, place tasks that should be addressed later.
- In the upper right quadrant, place tasks that should be done immediately.
- In the lower left quadrant, place tasks that should be eliminated.
- In the lower right quadrant, place tasks that can wait.
Be honest about whether a task is urgent or important to streamline your workload. Knowing when to address each task helps determine what should be done today, what can be done tomorrow, and what does not need to be done. This prioritization helps structure your work day so you have time to pursue personal interests.
Need a New Job for a Better Work-Life Structure?
Mercer Bradley can match you with accounting and finance jobs in Winnipeg that support your goals and provide time for personal interests. Visit our job board to apply for a role today!
