5 ways your tech can help get your work-life in balance

When you think of striking the perfect balance between work and life, we’re pretty sure technology isn’t on your radar as a way to improve it. Afterall, we’ve been told to see it as an obstacle to a healthy life.

Mobile phones steal our attention, work emails rob us of family time, and social media can make us a little anti-social. Having a poor work-life balance can lead to both physical and mental health problems, including anxiety and depression.

But technology in our everyday lives can actually help us strike a healthier balance. Here are five ways you can use tech to help manage your priorities effectively and improve your overall well-being.

    1. Integrate wellness into your routine

Work often blends into our personal lives. While this can seem subtle and almost insignificant at times, it’s very important to be able to set boundaries between the two. That said, there are ways you can integrate wellness into your work hours using everyday technology. Doing this can help your productivity, creativity, and mental well-being over time.

When it comes to your mental and physical health, you’ll notice a very positive impact from practising regular meditation and mindfulness. Apps such as Headspace, Calm and The Mindfulness App offer guided meditation and mindfulness techniques that can offer well-being benefits and help minimise anxiety.

For the best results, dedicate 10 minutes or so every day to mindfulness and meditation, you can see these benefits in your everyday working and personal life – you can even sleep more easily by practicing meditation before bed.

    2. Maintain your fitness

Another way to introduce wellness into your routine is through wearable technology like smartwatches and fitness trackers. Our busy work lives mean we often juggle many priorities and our fitness becomes a second thought.

Maintaining your fitness is incredibly important in regulating sleep patterns, positively affecting your mood, and improving resilience. By tracking your fitness levels and sleep patterns with smart watches, you can manage your workout regime and prevent your fitness from ever becoming an after-thought.

    3. Manage your productivity

The advent of cloud technology has meant we're able to collaborate on large scale projects in our organisations, regardless of time zone differences or busy schedules.

Google has seamlessly integrated email, schedules and calendars, collaboration, document sharing, video conferencing and instant messaging across their platforms – allowing teams to effectively coordinate and execute their projects.

Software and apps like Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams can effectively merge emails, calendars, meeting organisation, document sharing and conference calling into one unified, collaborative experience. Letting you access everything from anywhere.

    4. Tailor your tech to you

It’s important to choose the right mix of software to suit your business, colleagues and employees. It should allow your team to work flexibly and collaboratively, while enhancing the kind of workflow that most benefits you and your team.

Large teams or departments that need frequent collaboration and updates on various projects, you could benefit from cloud-based project management software like Atlassian’s Confluence. While a smaller team might require a leaner tool like Trello.

Design teams that focus on sharing visuals remotely would benefit from whiteboard tools like Miro and Whimsical to help display concepts and draft designs collaboratively.

Picking the right software and apps all comes down to understanding the needs of your team.

    5. Learn to switch off

While easier said than done, ‘switching off’  is crucial to getting the work-life balance we all want. While technology often keeps us tied to our jobs after hours, it can also help us connect to our lives outside of work.

Simple habits like listening to your favourite Spotify playlist or podcast on your drive home or streaming your favourite shows on the train, can reset your frame of mind and allow you to wind down.

These little moments of “down-time” can greatly improve your mindset and help you get on with life.

Suggestion

If you’re having trouble focusing or are stressed out, you can even try apps like the psychologist-approved, mood-training Happify, which involves simple games and gratitude prompts to readjust your mindset and overcome any negative thoughts.

Original Source – Vodafone Australia