Six steps to work and live better

Sometimes, if you look around, it seems like everyone else is juggling their work-life balance better than you. More often than not, it’s rare to gain an insight into how they keep up this charade despite your best efforts to keep up.

medibank

Sometimes, if you look around, it seems like everyone else is juggling their work-life balance better than you. More often than not, it’s rare to gain an insight into how they keep up this charade despite your best efforts to keep up.

The truth is our work lives have a huge impact on our overall health and there are always things we could be doing differently to optimise the balance. While no-one is perfect, sometimes it’s nice to be able to learn from each other, and shine a light on the fact that despite appearing natural, a lot of work goes into remaining stable.

Stress versus sleep

Neel Morley runs Neel Loves Curls, which is Australia’s very first dedicated curly hair salon. He tries to start his day with a positive mindset, but like many small business owners, he struggles to strike the right balance between his work life and his private life.

His biggest trouble is sleep, because while he tries to keep a consistent bedtime, he can be very restless.  “I’ve had many sleepless nights having a business. There aren’t many people that don’t have small business and haven’t been up all night thinking...How can I change this, how can I make this work?” he says.

And he’s not alone, a 2016 survey from the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health found that up to 45 per cent of Australians suffer from inadequate sleep.

Emily Toner, Clinical Psychologist, Mindfulness Consultant, and teacher at the Medibank School of Better, says “Sleep is such an integral, basic need that when we don't experience a good night's sleep, it can really impact our mental health, and our ability to, kind of, have a clear head and make good decisions.”

However, “There's a lot of different things that you can do to try and really increase the quality of sleep that you get.” She recommends, “Cutting out sugars and caffeine and those kind of things that really impact ourselves in the later part of the day.”

Juggling act

Vanessa Doake is a new mum transitioning back into the workforce. Like many parents, she’s been able to take time off to have her baby, but now she’s struggling to juggle her priorities

I 100% feel like my attention is split. I'm trying to understand what my boundaries are and what I am happy to do or not happy to do. But it feels like almost every day it changes and the specific environment that I'm in will change that as well.

Emily McQualter, a coach and facilitator at Happiness Concierge - a company that provides training programs designed to boost employee happiness, suggests that setting up good boundaries and reasonable expectations can go a long way, “It is totally okay to not be on all the time.”

She speaks to the relief of what happens when you, “set effective boundaries with your work and you’re very clear about the other things that are happening in your life that are really important.  you can say to them, I’m not accessible 24/7. I review my emails between this time and this time. If there is something urgent that you need from me, please text me”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: PODCAST PLAYER WITH ALL SIX EPISODES TO BE EMBEDDED HERE]

Avoiding the hanger games

Jen Severn is a property lawyer who often works 14-hour days. Outside of work, she’s also got her hands full juggling family responsibilities with volunteering and she struggles to fit in any time to look after herself in the middle of her already hectic schedule. Even lunch often falls by the wayside.

“There are certain days where I don’t get lunch. That back-to-back meetings, urgent work that needs to get out, marketing articles and all of that sort of stuff takes precedence,” she says.

“Sometimes I’ll find myself getting to four o’clock and feeling lightheaded - and really, really hungry, bordering on hangry. Then it’s like, ‘OK, well, I need to find something to eat’. That usually consists of a chocolate bar and a glass of water.”

But Emily believes lunch “al desko” is never a good thing, because lunch gives you a break and an opportunity to interact with your colleagues. High-protein foods like chicken, fish, eggs and nuts can help improve alertness and boost your productivity.

Graveyard shift

Morgan Sterley is an oncology nurse who often starts her rounds just as everyone else is preparing to go home for the day. Her constantly-changing routine can make it difficult to function due to lack of sleep and the impact shifts have on your circadian rhythm.

“Night shifts make you crazy. They do. It’s not necessarily the shift in itself. You can have a really nice night shift where you’re not doing much, but it’s that your sleep-wake patterns are out. I think the last bunch of night shifts I had, I went to a yoga class before I went and I cried the whole way through because I was just so emotional,” she says.

Dr Vicki Ashton - the Occupational Physician and Chief Medical Officer, at Monash University - says that you can find a much better physical balance by managing your routine and doing things like, “having meal times at regular times and making sure that you’re getting exercise every day. And if you can’t do it every day, do it every second day.” She also strongly recommends you,  “ensure

that you’ve got connection with your family and your friends, and to also look at what you’re

eating in between. So those are seem very basic requirements but they really anchor. They

anchor good health and a good sense of wellbeing. And they’re the first things to be looked

after.”

Ramesh Kumar is the CEO of the Southern Migrant and Refugee Centre, which helps people establish a life here in Australia. It’s the kind of work that is very hard to put down at the end of the day but he’s making a habit of leading by example and encouraging his staff to leave the office.

I go to each and every corner of the office and I make sure that people leave because they need to go, they need to stop their work at the end of the day, at the end of the office hours. So, everybody knows that they'll be in trouble if they stay a few minutes after work.

A Galaxy Research poll, in partnership with Medibank, found that 82 per cent of Australians report that work issues spill over into the personal lives. Simon Davey - one of the co-founders of Happy Melon Studios and a trained physiotherapist, says that the human brain needs regular periods of downtime in order to work at its highest capacity - and it takes courage and leadership to leave on time and encourage your employees to develop healthy habits.

Putting it all together

Abigail Forsyth is the managing director and co-founder of KeepCup, the Melbourne-based company that makes reusable coffee cups and now has 100 staff across three locations. It’s grown rapidly which means it’s constantly updating and reinventing itself at a rapid pace.

“Purpose is a pretty trendy word at the moment in business. People are trying to bold it onto all sorts of things. But this genuinely is a business that started as a solution to a problem and is still a problem-solving business so that’s really exciting for people,” she says.

“If you go out the back there’s 30 bikes, most people ride to work. There’s no disposables in the office, people are committed to composting, they’re sharing tips. We attract people who want to be doing that and sort of raising the bar on what it means to live a sustainable life.”

However, the culture of organisations is directly linked to the personality and values at the top. As such, the most important thing is for leaders to try and walk the talk, manage your stress better and be aware of the culture you’re creating in your own work environment.

Originally published as Six steps to work and live better