Too often, I find myself stretched thin between real work, school work, house work and other errands, which inevitably leads to more work. Needless to say, this leaves precious little time for myself to relax and just turn off my brain. In the time I do have, I try my best to spend some time with friends, or just on my own. Here’s a list of my top six ways to maintain a (somewhat) healthy work/life balance.
- Watch TV. A lot of it. I’ll admit, I watch way too much TV. In the regular season, I’ll be watching up to 20 odd shows, and in the summertime that drops down to about six or seven. Even so, that’s at least 2 or 3 shows per day! The best thing about too much TV? Hosting get-togethers with friends to do a season premiere viewing at your house! What could be better than having friends over with a bunch of snacks watching some quality TV?
- Read my RSS feeds. This is what my Google Reader tells me: From your 161 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 10,215 items, starred 6 items, shared 4 items, and emailed 0 items. It really doesn’t seem like I do anything in small quantities, and while about 25 of those feeds are job sites, the majority of my feeds provide entertainment. Whether it’s the LolCats RSS feed, or the RedFlagDeals RSS feed, I’ll always find something funny, interesting and topical.
- Social Networking. I’m fairly active on Twitter (albeit not so much these days) and I’m also on Facebook – a lot. I’m also the girl who’ll have tabs in Firefox dedicated to Gmail, Google reader and Facebook at all times, and Tweetdeck, MSN and my Outlook running in the background because I want to be up to date on everything. This also extends to my blackberry, albeit to a lesser extent. Now, I don’t see this as work. In fact, Martin Waxman of Palette PR made a strong argument for staying connected while on a vacation.
- Playing World of Warcraft. Yep. I play World of Warcraft. In fact, if you like, you can check out the two characters I’ve nurtured over the past six months – Elyria, a level 57 night elf hunter and Leslee, a lvl 80 human warrior. WoW is harmless enough when you play in moderation but I can see how this game could seriously take over someone’s life.
- Simple pleasures: drawing a bath.
- Hot Yoga Session. This is truly me time. I go to hot yoga classes for myself, to better my body (which really needs some work), calm my mind and reboot my system. Not to mention buying really cute hot yoga outfits! It’s not hard to carve out an hour to 90 minutes for this workout every couple of days, and it’s so worth it.
Nothing like a nice hot bubble bath to sooth a day’s worth of hard work. Paired with a really good book (currently wanting to read: Sookie Stackhouse books) and some bubbly, it’s easy to just let the stress of a day melt away in a tub of hot water. That reminds me – I need to go pick up a bath bar at Lush!
Well, there’s my top six ways of maintaining work/life balance. How do you do your maintenance?
One Comment
I’ve been trying to sort out this work – life balance for the past month or so. Its harder than most people think! I constantly feel like I never have enough time to everything I want to do in a day.
I’m definitely on Twitter way too much, I’m addicted to the Food network and my RSS feeds are insane (similar to yours). I guess its time for me to focus more on the simple things and to find some time to exercise… You’ve given me some things to think about =)
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