How is your feeling being under COVID-19 for a year and a half?
How is your feeling about staying in Hong Kong without traveling?
How do you feel about the experience of working from home?
Does your boss assign more assignments and workload to you when you work from home?
Are you feeling more stressed now that you could not balance your time between work and your life under the pandemic situation?
CURRENT SITUATION UNDER COVID-19 IN HONG KONG
It is important to find a suitable way in relieving our stress, especially under COVID-19.
Before COVID-19. as Hongkongers, we mostly go outside and travel to different places once we have holidays. Different organizations hold many mass events for people to participate in.
And now, under COVID-19, companies have to work from home. People need to use video call to contact other people more frequently.
There are no longer mass events with a large number of people gathering at the same place for social gatherings. We could only gather people in public space up to 4 people.
Sometimes, we may want to go out and catch our breath by meeting different people, go to a bar, and have a drink to wind down ourselves while these opportunities have been limited.
PROBLEMS CREATING WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE UNDER COVID-19
Time management has been a challenge for every one of us.
We may not have managed our time well because of other unimportant stuff distracting us.
Under COVID-19, it has been more challenging for all of us.
Mostly, we have to work from home. Home is a comfortable place and is usually a place for us to relax.
However, there are many distractions at home that may lower our efficiency when we work alone.
For example, our home is a place where no supervisor is monitoring our working schedules. We could work flexibly.
What’s more, our bed could also be a distraction to us too. We may want to stay in a comfortable bed as long as we want.
Procrastination could deeply affect our working progress and efficiency.
Afterward, we would easily stress ourselves at work, especially when we work alone since everything has been packed together.
What’s more, there is no chance for us to interact with colleagues face to face instantly.
Many miscommunications may be created and create more troubles at work. This might increase our workload and make us feel overwhelmed.
Also, when there are fewer chances to have regular social gatherings to relieve our stress compared to the past, such as communicating with groups of friends face-to-face. We could easily fall into the trap of using more time to focus on our work.
It could easily give us more stress and struggles to ourselves, creating more negative feelings afterward.
Under the new situation with new modes of work and social life, how to cope with ourselves by balancing and adjusting our work and life in this famous unhappy city?
Here are some of my tips to manage ourselves well between work and life that could make us feel more comfortable under COVID-19.
7 TIPS FOR BALANCING WORK AND LIFE
Listing
Create a to-do list for ourselves.
Make goals for each day to target ourselves what we have to accomplish today in work.
By listing out the things we have to do for a day and listing out all the priorities, it could clearly define what we are going to do today, and further increase our working efficiency by understanding our workload of a day.
When we finish all the tasks we have listed, we could cross them out all.
This process could create a sense of satisfaction when we achieve the goals we have set for the day and make us feel happier.
Take a short break
Don’t focus too much on our work for a long time.
Humans need breaks too. If we spend too much time on focusing a task without taking a break, we could easily feel more tired and even lower our efficiency.
Psychologically, we could easily feel frustrated by blaming our working performance if it is getting worsen.
Having a 5-10 minutes break by walking around, going to the toilet, replying to messages, drinking a cup of coffee or water could help us wind down a little bit in restoring our energy to keep on working.
Reward ourselves
Creates some reward for ourselves is another way to motivate ourselves in work.
When we finish all the works for the day, we could reward ourselves.
Do anything we want to make us feel happy, such as watching drama or TV shows, playing games, go out and do exercise, etc.
This could create more positive emotions for ourselves.
Regular face-to-face communication with friends
We should spend time communicating with friends.
Proper and regular social gatherings are necessary.
We need to talk to others and create moments and happiness for each other.
Friends are important because they are the ones who support us.
They are the comfort zone for us to share our experiences and feelings.
Me-Time
Me-time is important to everyone.
We should have a me-time to communicate ourselves or let ourselves get rest and take a break.
It would be better to create an individual space for ourselves for relaxation.
It is a space for us to take care of ourselves individually.
Sleep
Sufficient sleep is essential.
Scientists always claim that 8 hours of sleep is the best for an adult to recover energy.
Also, sleeping well with sufficient hours could enhance our psychological emotions the next day.
We would feel more favorable for the next day and feel energetic.
It could increase the level of working efficiency too.
Spare our GOLDEN Time
There are only 24 hours a day.
So, use our time wisely by prioritizing the things we have to do and making sure we have our social life and individual life to balance ourselves not to get overloaded by work.
Sometimes, if we want to go out and play, finishing our work as soon as possible could motivate us to get things done as fast as possible.
Then, we could enrich our life and play as much as we can.
In conclusion, work-life balance is a lifelong course. We may use different kinds of methods to manage our time in balancing work and life under different circumstances. Under COVID-19, we may need to be more alert to manage our time in balancing work, social life, and individual life.
The pandemic situation has been creating negative psychological emotions in people. It takes time for us to adapt to a new situation. Such 7 tips could be used in daily lives and it is applicable to such an era. Most importantly, don’t stress too much and take too much burden. It may create more harm than benefits to ourselves.
Alison Chan
Summer intern 2021
Destiny Research Institute Ltd.