Work-Life Symphony: How to Balance Work and Personal Life

Over-focusing on career achievements can endanger your health and personal relationships. But by maintaining a work-life balance using healthy habits, boundaries, and communication platforms, you’ll be more fulfilled, productive, and likely to hit your goals.

Spike’s in-depth guide explains what a healthy work-life balance looks like (and doesn’t), and breaks down how to maintain a work-life balance in nine practical steps.

Here we go.

What Is Work-Life Balance?

Work-life balance is a state of calm, enjoyment, and fulfillment between your personal and professional life. Neither area overpowers or negatively affects the other.

A work-life balance example is tackling a demanding work project with effective task delegation and prioritization, logging off as planned, and enjoying a relaxing evening.

But balance looks different for different people. Say a person runs a small business with their best friend. Their work schedule is part social, part professional, so a 12-hour shift isn’t necessarily out of balance.

Conversely, someone with a relatively lower workload might get burned out because they lack self-care and a supportive network outside work. That said, objective factors often influence balance levels.

These include individuals’ caring responsibilities and health needs, plus the company’s culture and hybrid work options. That’s why workers in competitive, workload-heavy industries such as the startup or financial sectors especially struggle to find balance.

4 Causes of Poor Work-Life Balance

Let’s dive into the top causes behind poor work-life balance.

1. Always-on technology

In the US, we check our phones 144 times a day. And this habit doesn’t magically stop at work. First, many mobile apps send automatic push notifications.

Unless customized, both these and desktop apps create an “always-on” environment, whether you’re at home or the office. Getting constant pings—from email inboxes, project management dashboards, or family WhatsApp—leads to context switching, which creates distraction, overload, and imbalance.

2. Burnout culture

Businesses with burnout culture value productivity above all else, including workers’ well-being. In practice, leaders might discourage time off and flexibility, spotlight overworking employees as examples, and bombard teams with tasks and meetings.

Hybrid workplaces must especially resist burnout-inducing practices. When employees work from home, it’s easy to let work tasks bleed into after-hours time (the desk is just a few feet away from the dinner table, after all.)

This can blur the separation lines between home and work, leading to over-working.

3. Inflexible working arrangements

Your company policies and processes might also limit employees’ work-life balance. For instance, not offering generous paid time off (PTO), sick leave, and parental leave forces workers to work through illness or difficult life stages.

Plus, managers might be under-responsive to individual circumstances due to workplace culture or lack of training. Say a high-performing part-time worker studies for a master’s degree on the side.

Expecting them to work without schedule flexibility and, when necessary, reduced hours, is a recipe for burnout and under-performance.

4. Inefficient collaboration

Teams that don’t collaborate effectively tackle workflows more slowly, increase over time, and have less time for family and hobbies. An example of inefficient collaboration is when team members don’t check task updates in a project management platform and instead interrupt colleagues with messages.

Similarly, team leaders might not delegate effectively. For instance, they overburden specific members or leave out essential instructions.

A lack of boundaries also causes an imbalance—have you ever received an email at 9 pm requiring an “urgent response”?

How to Spot an Unhealthy Work-Life Balance

A sure sign of unhealthy work-life balance is the big B.  – Burnout.

A worrying three out of four employees experience burnout at work. In turn, burnout causes staff to leave (claiming between 20-50% of annual turnover), and increases absenteeism rates, medical payouts, and productivity losses.

Before burning out, you might notice other signs of work-life imbalance. Perhaps you’re dedicating less time to your hobbies and relationships, your sleeping patterns change (for the worse), you struggle to prepare healthy meals, or you can’t remember the last time you went on vacation.

As if that’s not inconvenient enough, there are more knock-on effects from work-life imbalance. Here’s a handful.

• Stressful work situations trigger health problems such as anxiety, chronic pain, or migraines.

• You feel low motivation for both work and personal activities. For instance, you’re not excited about your weekly movie night with your partner.

• You’re less satisfied with job elements that used to please you, like your supportive team, exciting projects, or free sodas.

• There’s more tension or conflict in both personal and work relationships.

What does this look like in practice? Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Case 1: The no-delegation manager

Claude runs the recruitment division. Coworkers love Claude—they say yes to most requests and don’t overload their team. However, this means they’re not delegating effectively, taking on much of the workload.

This leads Claude to work around 11 hours a day and write emails at the weekend. They’re experiencing insomnia, dreading Mondays, and having more fights at home.

Case 2: The over-achiever

Hannah wants to get her company’s products to as many customers as possible. She puts in extra hours to write pitches and have international calls, and she over-prepares for her feedback sessions.

Outside work, however, Hannah rarely engages with her hobbies, friends, or self-care. As a result, she’s experiencing low job satisfaction, poor mental health, and disconnection.

In both examples, employees are struggling but haven’t identified a way forward. Next, let’s look at work-life balance strategies.

9 Strategies to Improve Work-Life Balance

Improving work-life balance takes time. But with the right tools, you can make steady progress. Here are Spike’s top work-life balance strategies.

1. Maintain healthy habits

Have a plan and schedule in place to practice healthy living habits. This prevents health-driven work-life balance problems—such as inadequate sleep causing absenteeism and poorer performance at work.

Here’s a round-up of the latest science-backed health habits to get you started.

• Sleep: Don’t bring work or entertainment to bed, avoid liquids and devices two hours before sleep, and get out of bed after 15 minutes if you can’t manage to fall asleep, before trying again.

• Eating: Increase your intake of plant-based meals, eat gut-friendly foods like kefir and kimchi, and replace high-salt snacks like potato chips with protein-packed ones like nuts.

• Exercise: Find a type of exercise you enjoy and do it at least three times a week for 25+ minutes. For example, yoga provides calm and balance, while jogging gets your heart rate up, offering clarity and energy.

• Mental well-being: Notice the triggers behind emotional reactions, practice self-care consistently, and seek professional help when needed.

2. Create work-life boundaries

Without boundaries, tensions from your personal life can infuse your professional life and vice-versa, leading to burnout and conflict.

For instance, consistently missing family plans due to work tasks can damage your relationships while doing personal tasks during work hours limits focus and productivity.

Here are some boundary examples you can tailor to your needs and lifestyle. At work, try to:

• Set expectations with colleagues on email or chat response times (for instance, within one day).

• Learn to say “No” to spontaneous requests if they’re not important, urgent, or within your job role.

• Set a cut-off point after which you stop working (for instance, 7 pm), excluding genuine emergencies.

Also, in your personal life:

• Ask friends and family members not to call or text you during working hours unless it’s an emergency.

• Avoid discussing workplace gossip with friends and family to prevent conflict escalation at work. (However, do seek advice and support in situations that make you feel unsafe.)

• Let your loved ones know when you need time alone to recharge or enjoy your hobbies.

3. Take those vacation days

A sure way to enjoy both your work and home life is to escape both. Don’t believe us? The idea behind the hit musical “Hamilton” came to Lin-Manuel Miranda on vacation.

Use your paid time off to relax, see new places, and detach from every day worries. It can improve your sleep and cognitive performance, and help you enjoy your job more.

It’s difficult to go OOO, though, especially if you’re excited about a project or worried about your to-do list. So, here are our tips to bring that vacation forward.

• Save a mesmerizing picture of your ideal holiday destination as your desktop background.

• Plan your trip with a loved one—like a partner or friend—so they can hold you accountable.

• Take a leap and book your trip (after getting the okay from your employer.) Now, there’s no going back.

4. Find your burnout prevention strategies

Burnout can damage your physical and mental health, your work performance, and even your ability to manage your finances. Also, you can’t limit burnout to just one area of your life.

If you burn out at work, you take it home with you, and vice-versa. And it’s not an overnight fix. Recovering from burnout takes between three months to over a year.

But thankfully, proven methods can keep burnout at bay. Try a few options and see what works best for you. For example:

• Breathing exercises help relieve anxiety in tense situations. Try box breathing—breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, breathe out for four, then hold for four again. Repeating this a few times oxygenates your brain, releasing stress.

• Mindful awareness for several minutes slows down your thoughts, improving mental clarity. While sitting or walking, try to silently label what you sense, including sounds, images, smells, bodily sensations, and emotions.

• Art therapy, such as amateur acting classes or paint-by-numbers, engages your playfulness and creativity. While focusing on process and enjoyment, the causes of burnout—such as stress or perfectionism—become smaller.

• Authentic conversations with people you trust help you feel heard and validated and can inspire solutions. For instance, a therapy session could reveal that you need stronger boundaries with family members to feel more relaxed at home.

5. Discover new hobbies

Many of us prioritize work and “serious” pastimes (like volunteering) over hobbies bringing relaxation and joy. However, investing in creative, joy-producing hobbies helps improve our memory and performance at work.

Plus, we get to be our full selves, creating a balance. Hobby possibilities are endless, but we’ll make a start for you. Why not:

• Try a book genre you don’t usually read. For instance, if you’re a thriller junkie, pick up a sci-fi novel or a beach-friendly romance.

• Find a group activity you can do on a table. Get a 1000-piece jigsaw, try a new board game, or fill a photo album with your loved ones.

• Take a beginners’ class in the subject you were most interested in as a kid. Maybe for you, it was painting, ice skating, or space exploration.

6. Set realistic expectations and targets

Setting realistic targets helps your company grow, but not at the expense of your well-being.

First, help shape attainable goals for projects. These depend on the team size, budget, timeline, skills, market competition, and other factors.

As an example, getting a $1 million philanthropic donation might be realistic for a global nonprofit with high-net-worth connections, and less so for a small charity that raises $50k a year.

Second, estimate how long your tasks might take. Consider the number of hours you work per week, your skills and knowledge, and the relative difficulty of the tasks.

For instance, you might break down a market analysis task into sub-tasks research, modeling, and recommendation writing. You then estimate they’ll take 50 hours altogether and, with a working week of 25 hours, that makes your timeline two working weeks.

Pro tip: It’s okay to set stretch goals that help you grow under pressure. Just don’t overdo it. If, say, your average time estimate for a task is 10 days, a stretch goal could be a 10% reduction, so you deliver the task in nine days.

However, condensing the work to five days could lead to burnout and poorer results.

7. Use productivity hacks

Increasing your on-the-job productivity means you reduce overtime and stress, restoring some balance. Here are our top-rated productivity hacks:

• The Pareto Principle (80/20 rule): Prioritize the 20% of efforts that deliver 80% of the results. For example, picking the right target segment for an email campaign might make the 20%, while using the Oxford comma in the copy may not.

• The Eisenhower method: Use a 2×2 prioritization matrix to divide tasks into four categories, based on importance and urgency. This helps you order competing tasks and focus on important and urgent ones.

• The Pomodoro technique: Work for 25 minutes, break for five. Repeat. This productivity hack keeps you focused and refreshed, avoiding burnout.

• Delegation: Share team tasks according to individual workloads, skill sets, knowledge levels, and availability.

• Task breakdowns: Sub-tasks help speed up your workflow and avoid missing crucial instructions. For instance, instead of adding “Call clients” to your calendar, plan instead to “Call account X” and “Call account Y”.

• Visual schedule: Add your daily tasks to a visual schedule—like a calendar view or a Kanban board tracking delivery status. This helps you remember key activities like team meetings and not miss important milestones.

Pro tip: Use Spike’s Magic AI to quickly break down tasks. For instance, prompt the AI to “break down my annual report editing task into 10 distinct sub-tasks.”

8. Seek team support

Don’t suffer in silence. If you’re struggling to find work-life balance and your current strategies don’t work, reach out to your team for support.

First, speak to your line manager. List your work-life balance obstacles (such as working overtime or feeling anxious) and request adjustments (like flexible start times).

Your manager might suggest additional solutions, like delegating more tasks or turning off mobile notifications after work hours.

Second, approach your HR team. Ask what company resources and procedures can address work-life balance.

Your HR team might outline options like paid or unpaid leave, switching to part-time or hybrid work, or allowances for self-care services such as meditation apps.

9. Prioritize wellness-enhancing tech

The tech you use—for both business and pleasure—can impact your work-life balance. For instance, lacking advanced notification settings means personal pings interrupt your work.

Additionally, software features that help set boundaries and manage productivity reduce overload and stress.

Here are some examples of wellness-enhancing features on business software.

• Team scheduling software lets you set regular break reminders.

• Work chats let you enable notifications for specific people, groups, or keywords—with day and time adjustments.

• Project management platforms include real-time collaborative tasks, workflows, and documents, reducing unnecessary check-ins and misunderstandings.

Finding Remote Work-Life Balance

Office work takes time away from family, friends, and hobbies—especially with longer commutes. At the same time, though, it separates your private and work lives, making boundaries easier.

Meanwhile, remote and hybrid workplaces have distinct work-life balance challenges. Here are the top ones and how to overcome them.

Manage remote distractions

Working from home, you’re tempted to multi-task between personal and professional tasks. (Hands up if you’ve folded laundry off-video on a work call.)

This is efficient up to the point when you get distracted and start making errors. Here are three tips to manage at-home distractions.

• First, schedule personal tasks during breaks or outside working hours.

• Second, work from a local hub when possible, like a quiet cafe, library, or co-working space, to get deep work done without interruption.

• Third, create daily and weekly routines to stay productive and avoid burnout.

Set extra boundaries

If you share your space, ask family members or roommates for specific boundaries when you work remotely. For instance, ask your partner to watch the kids when you’re in an important meeting (say, giving an interview on BBC).

Also, clarify the noise level you expect from others at home and between what times you shouldn’t be disturbed.

Let tech help you

t’s not just laundry that can distract you during remote work. Notifications from personal apps do, too. Use your phone’s focus settings to block notifications from personal apps and an app blocker to stop you from doom-scrolling on news and social media apps.

Remotely, colleagues’ messages may increase, too. So, firmly communicate when you’re available for tasks and meetings, and mute less urgent chats during focused work.

Plus, to ensure quality time with loved ones after hours, consider using a work-only mobile phone so all workplace pings go straight to the desk drawer.

How Spike Can Help You Achieve Work-Life Balance

Spike is a team communication platform that lets you manage people and workflows swiftly and effectively. Acting as a hub for your emails, chats, tasks, and documents, it helps you finish work faster so you can taste that sweet, sweet work-life balance.

Here’s how Spike features help achieve this.

Have access to all your comms

Spike brings emails and chats in one unified, people-sorted hub. Handily, its conversational Magic AI helps you plan and write responses in a quick, personalized way.

The app also automatically sorts messages into priority (people you know) and everything else. Plus, you can pin important conversations, auto-archive less urgent ones, and snooze responses.

In short, you prioritize the comms you focus on and reduce noise and overload. You can also choose the messages that trigger notifications—and even set unique sounds for each contact. Boundaries, check. ✅

Finish work on time using collaboration tools

Spike’s collaboration tools speed up team workflows, so work doesn’t overflow into your time. Public channels and private groups, for instance, help you reach the right coworkers, and you can send images, videos, voice notes, and pre-viewable files.

Plus, shared calendar events help you find the best times to collaborate—why not add a block titled “Focused work” in your schedule for crystal-clear boundaries?

Additionally, Spike’s collaborative tasks keep your team on the same page. Track, for instance, when items are done, stuck, or in progress, with real-time updates.

Set deadlines and reminders, and snooze tasks to get a bit more time. So, what does a balanced workday look like with Spike? Here’s a glimpse.

• 9 am: Start a focused work session (already in team members’ calendars.)

• 10 am: Check priority messages only and reply with Magic AI.

• 12 pm: Get a break reminder. Step away from your desk and go for a walk.

• 1 pm: Join a Spike video meeting and make key decisions in your team.

• 4 pm: Finish and tick off your daily tasks. Check non-priority emails and snooze where appropriate.

• 6 pm: Log off, check your Spike notifications are paused, and look forward to dinner.

Work Won’t Love You Back (But Spike Will)

Knowing how to have a work-life balance prevents health and relationship hurdles while keeping you productive and fulfilled at work.

While everyone has individual needs, your balance will likely improve with healthy sleep and eating habits, regular time off, anti-burnout strategies like breathing exercises, realistic targets, and team support.

Plus, your team is more productive and less prone to burnout with effective collaboration platforms. Enter Spike. With a unified email, chat, and task hub, it streamlines workflows and reduces overworking.

It won’t stay for dinner, though—with advanced notification, snooze, and prioritization settings, your work-life boundaries are safe.