If you never shut off your Slack notifications, you’re not alone. A recent study found that 60% of American workers struggle to maintain clear boundaries between work and personal life. On top of that, 48% identify themselves as “workaholics.” What’s more alarming is that the United States ranks 53rd out of 60 countries globally for work-life balance.
When it comes to safeguarding mental well-being in the workplace, it’s crucial to prioritize harmony over balance. Author, licensed therapist, and Flow Space Advisor Minaa B recently shared with Flow Space how she honors her own mental and emotional capacity in the workplace. Take a look at her tips, below.
Make a decision to devote your energy in certain places at one time.
“The reason why is because the actual definition of balance is to give something equal distribution,” Minaa B told SheKnows Editor-in-Chief Erika Janes during a recent panel. “So what that means to me is when we are trying to strive for work-life balance, what we are trying to do is give equal distribution to everything in our personal lives as well as match that same energy and effort to our work lives and that’s not realistic.”
Minaa continued by suggesting that this mindset indicates a struggle among Americans to discern and prioritize what truly matters when attempting to balance various aspects of life evenly. She elaborated by illustrating her own approach, noting the varying degrees of effort she allocates to meetings versus checking emails at the start of her workday.
“I’m not going to give 50 percent of myself to emails then the other 50 percent of myself to my projects and just give the same amount of myself to every single thing that’s on my plate,” Minaa says. “Harmony is learning to recognize what is my energetic bandwidth and how I make use of the energy and the effort that I have at this moment.”
For Minaa, this could entail waking up on certain days and investing only 20% of her energy into her work. However, this doesn’t imply a lack of commitment or subpar performance. Rather, it signifies her conscientious effort to respect her mental and emotional limits.
“When we strive for harmony, what we’re doing is we’re making space for radical acceptance in our lives by saying, ‘I can still show up with the energy and the effort that I have and provide my best.’ Sometimes I don’t have to give 100 for it to be my best.”
Do a regular well-being evaluation.
Minaa adopts a similar approach when working with patients, routinely asking them to rate their well-being on a scale from one to ten. She stresses the importance of self-evaluation, urging individuals to determine where they stand on this scale to function at their best. For Minna B, her ideal level is around a seven.
“I don’t have to be a ten everyday,” she says. “Living in harmony is recognizing there are going to be times when I maneuver through my day, where I wake up like a ten, then as I get through the afternoon, I’m at a seven, and maybe by the evening I’m at a three. My needs are different but I can still show up as my full self even if my energy and my effort is shifting throughout the day.”
Break your days up into work and rest periods.
In addition, Minaa also emphasizes the necessity of integrating specific strategies into our workday to effectively manage and prioritize our mental well-being while fulfilling professional responsibilities. She highlights the importance of doing a self check-in in addition to incorporating certain tools and practices.
“The first thing I might encourage people to do is be very mindful of how you incorporate certain responsibilities within your day and also how you structure your day,” she says. “A core method that I’ll help people follow is something called the 90/15/15 method that I highly recommend. This is when you do 90 minutes of work followed by 15 minutes of a break.”
Minaa stresses the need to focus on one crucial thing while trying out this method: during that initial 15-minute break, make sure you’re doing something productive rather than harmful. She explains that productive activities boost your confidence, help you cope, and recharge your batteries. Minna says this can include anything from taking a moment to stretch, grab some water, or maybe even listen to a 15 meditation.
“There are times, however, we don’t realize we are so overwhelmed by work that when we take breaks from work, we expose ourselves to maladaptive things that actually increase our stress responses,” says Minaa. “For example, studies show that the average American checks their phone every three minutes. What happens is, we need the break but we run to our devices.”
She says the last 15 minutes in the routine is solely for looking at your calendars and to ensure that you’re incorporating time for self care and time for nourishment that is disconnected from work. “I’m a big believer in reminding people that we can’t keep letting life happen to us,” she says. “At some point we have to look at our schedules and look at the demands of our own lives and figure out how to take control of our calendar as well as well as some of the responsibilities that we have.”