How can I improve my life outside work?

Improving the working side is only part of the equation. A good, healthy work / life balance is also about making the most of your non-working time. You can either fill that time with stimulating, enriching activities, or not, in which case you’re more likely to spend it worrying about work. The key to finding your balance is to make your non-working time a better and more important part of your life.

One of the best ways to begin to do this is by separating out all the different aspects of your life that you consider important. So there’s your work aspect, for one. Then, for example, there’s your health and fitness. Then there’s your role in your family or intimate relationships. There’s your broader social life. There are your interests. And then there’s your personal development, or your plans for the future. These are just broad ideas. Your own categories will no doubt be more precise. For example, one category might be your role as a gardener, and another might be your plan to become a tightrope-walker. You get the idea.

Once you’ve got these categories down, think of one thing you could do in each of them in the next week. For example, in terms of your fitness, one thing you could do next week would be to have a session of whatever exercise you prefer. In your family or intimate relationship role it could be having a meal with your partner where you sit, not in front of a TV, but across a table from each other and talk, or it could be reading your children a bedtime story.

Socially you might call one friend you haven’t spoken to for ages. In terms of your interests, if you love gardening you could spend an hour with your hands in the dirt, and if you love reading Russian history you could spend an hour or two doing that. As for your ambitions for the future, you could make a phone call to book a tightrope-walking course, or go and buy that guidebook to Patagonia.

Once you’ve got your list of single things to do in each category in the next week, schedule them in your diary. There won’t be many, and if you keep them simple none of them should take very long. You don’t have to take your partner to Paris for the weekend. You don’t have to run a marathon. Just have one proper meal together, and do one easy run.

The important thing is make these commitments realistic. Everyone knows how New Year’s resolutions to give up all vices and run 10 miles a day usually fail before the Christmas decorations are down. The same rule applies to taking back your time. If you try to do it all at once, or shoot too high, it’s very easy to fail, and that can make the whole plan collapse and trigger the thought that there’s no point trying to control your life.

So schedule your commitments sensibly, with none of them given so much time that they’ll make your live unliveable. But once you have scheduled them, treat them as though they’re set in stone. If you’ve scheduled spending an hour with your children, make that hour sacred. If you’re going to spend one lunchtime reading your new guidebook to Patagonia, let nothing overtake it. Don’t allow these commitments to give way to anything. They are high-priority, important appointments.

That doesn’t mean never thinking about work. Work is an enormous part of life and can be hugely stimulating and satisfying. It makes sense to allocate a time in the week when you will think about ways to improve your work or advance your career. Doing this in a focused, concentrated way once a week, away from the day-to-day pressures, will be far more productive than worrying about it in a semi-conscious, anxious way all the time. And when that session’s over, draw the line, put it away and go fully into something else.

Make it a habit to have one of these planning sessions with yourself every week. Choose your activities, make sure they’re achievable, schedule them and stick firmly to the schedule. You’ll be amazed at how quickly neglected sides of your life begin to flourish and move forward, and how the balance of your life begins to change.