Work-Life Integration: Try These Strategies to Optimize Your Time
The demands of the workplace—coupled with escalating expectations around our personal lives—continue to intensify. From the front lines of executive coaching, we’ve seen repeatedly at SHAMBAUGH that if these areas aren’t properly managed, it can lead to stress and fatigue, as well as decreased health, leadership ability, and general performance.
At SHAMBAUGH’s Women in Leadership and Learning (WILL) program, we prioritize this topic, as many women leaders share that this energy drain is one of their top challenges. Countless women I’ve spoken with about this topic have shared that their instinctive response to competing or increasing demands is to put in more hours at work, neglecting their own self-care while skipping opportunities to recharge.
The concepts, tools, and executive coaching that WILL uses as part of our women’s leadership development programs help women improve their energy management skills—and they’re based on science. They also create a practical framework that incorporates physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of our lives. In each of these critical realms, we guide women in leadership to establish actionable strategies and new routines to assess, mitigate, and rework their habits and practices to create greater well-being.
We kick off this special WILL session with a breathing exercise to help diffuse stress and turn down our mental narratives and negative emotions. This simple practice allows women to be present, clear their mind, release the “victim” mindset, and revise each sphere of their lives as needed.
Here are highlights of three of SHAMBAUGH’s key strategies for optimizing your time and achieving better work-life integration:
Seek Integration, Not Balance
While the traditional concept of work-life balance focuses on creating an elusive equality between the personal and professional sides of your life, work-life integration (WLI) is more realistic for overstretched executives. The Society for Human Resource Management describes WLI as a “holistic approach that seeks to blend personal and professional needs. Rather than treating work and life as separate entities or creating a conflict between them, the goal of WLI is to find areas of compromise and synergy.” By trying to achieve integration of other parts of your life with your work life, women can avoid the frustration that comes with striving for a perfect “balance.”
Reflect on Your Wheel of Life
During WILL, we guide participants through reviewing their current “Wheel of Life,” which we define as incorporating relationships, health, money, spiritual/character, career, recreation, personal growth, and service. As they think about their investment in each of these areas, we ask them to consider how bumpy the ride would be if this were an actual wheel? Think about what parts of the wheel you’re most wanting and willing to make a shift in. What would you like to create in each of these areas?
For example, while many people spend too much time on email, sometimes it’s necessary to set this aside to get more important things done. Managing those important elements of your work and life means setting boundaries by letting others know your needs—and which ones are not being met or respected. Establishing and communicating about your boundaries not only demonstrates respect for yourself but also shows respect for others’ boundaries and needs.
Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time
The concept of time management suggests that if we can only be efficient enough in how we structure what we do with each hour of the day, then we can finally be on top of our lives and schedule. We can’t slow down time since it’s constant, but we can control how we spend our time. A more realistic and effective exercise is working on energy management instead, by managing the energy you devote to your physical health, emotional happiness, mental focus, and spiritual purpose.
In WILL, we begin this exploration with an energy assessment to evaluation your current state in your body, emotions, and mind. We then review energy rechargers that can help in each area, such as:
- Including rest and recovery in your plans to promote physical energy
- Setting boundaries and defusing negative emotions through deep abdominal breathing to expand emotional energy
- Keeping a journal of your energy levels and reducing interruptions to boost mental energy
- Scheduling time for deep and inner work to promote spiritual energy
- Boosting your energy by finding time to express gratitude for others and for positive situations
WILL also helps you learn how to increase your self-awareness and improve your self-management. For example, we share practices to strengthen your emotional intelligence to recognize, express, and deal with emotions that deplete your energy, while learning to replace those with energy-enhancing habits. Learn more about SHAMBAUGH Women in Leadership and Learning (WILL) program on our website.
If you or your team have advice for women in leadership that you’d like to share or questions you’d like to ask about this topic, please reach out to me at info@shambaughleadership.com.
Link to SHAMBAUGH’s offerings on Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Coaching and Development Programs for Women, Keynotes and Fireside Chats.
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Rebecca Shambaugh is a recognized author and speaker on leadership best practices. She is president of SHAMBAUGH Leadership, founder of Women in Leadership and Learning, and author of the bestselling books It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor. Read Rebecca’s best-selling Harvard Business Review article “To Sound Like a Leader About What You Say and How and When You Say It.
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