With a heavy plate of never-ending responsibilities, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed as a professional in today’s highly demanding marketing world.
Any experienced marketer knows how stressful and challenging this line of work can be. As a marketing talent agency, we also know how important it is for marketers to focus on their personal life just as much as their professional life.
Constant stress at work not only affects your performance as an employee, but your personal relationships and overall well-being. From having to produce high-quality work on the job to maintaining relationships with your friends to keeping up with your family; taking care of yourself might be your last concern.
The more you work, the less time you have to spend on other activities. And let’s face it – as a marketer, you have a lot of work to get done. You may not be able to have it all or have a perfect life, but it’s crucial to keep a good balance between your personal and professional lives to maintain a fulfilling one. Or else, things on both ends will suffer.
Marketing Talent Agency’s Tips for a Healthy Work-Life Balance You Must Know
Work-life balance means something different to every person, but there are certain steps everyone can take to create a healthy one. Here are a marketing recruitment firm’s key tips for busy marketing professionals on successfully maintaining work-life balance in a demanding industry.
1. Become Self-Aware
As a marketing talent agency, we find that many marketing professionals find a healthier work-life balance when they’re well-aware of their emotional and mental states.
With such a heavy workload, it’s easy to become consumed by your work, and it becomes oblivious that certain things may take a toll on you.
Avoid falling into a rut and encouraging unhealthy habits by taking time to reflect on yourself. Be realistic in setting your goals and establishing what you can do based on your strengths. Don’t be consumed by your weaknesses, but make sure to be aware of them to truly understand how much you can handle on your plate.
Recognize the things in your work and personal lives that have a negative impact on you and work to eliminate these things. Constantly exposing yourself to stressful and meaningless things or people will only hinder your happiness and productivity.
2. Understand Your Priorities
Where and how you spend your time has a direct correlation to how successful you are in reaching work-life balance and overall success.
Take time to identify what’s important – focus on key relationships and activities that add happiness and value to your life. By establishing clear-cut priorities, you can invest quality time into these activities and relationships.
If you find that certain things or people are wasting your time, it may be worth cutting them out of your life. Focus on the elements of your life you value the most and prioritize those things. Everything else that falls after it will have to take a backseat.
Minimize the time you waste on things that don’t add value to your life and maximize the time you spend with people and on activities you enjoy. Once you understand the importance of this and learn how to manage your top priorities, it will alleviate the pressures and strain you put on yourself.
3. Enjoy Your Personal Time
You don’t necessarily have to take a trip to have a getaway from work. Taking time out for yourself can be as simple as taking a personal day to handle personal matters or do absolutely nothing.
While it’s crucial to dedicate much of your efforts and time toward your job and career as a marketer, it’s also important to focus on yourself. If you’re not in your best mental state, it will have negative impacts on your work and productivity. And any recruiter or marketing talent agency looks for talent who understands that.
When you put yourself first, you are better able to manage your relationships with other people. Putting enough value in your personal time and discovering how to make the most of it will truly impact your mindset in and out of the office.
4. Unplug from Technology
We are in a digitally-connected world that never seems to rest. Technology affects nearly every element of our lives, and will continue to do so for a very long time.
It makes key processes in marketing more efficient and allows us to connect with friends and family like never before. However, the emergence of technology unfortunately makes it harder to truly check out from your job and its demands.
As a marketer, you probably feel pressured to constantly check your emails and work phone to avoid missing out on anything important. And as a marketing talent agency, we completely understand how difficult it is to let go in a digitally-driven industry. We also understand how important it is to make time to unplug from your devices and live in the moment.
Give your mind a break by not only disconnecting yourself from work during off-hours, but completely detaching yourself from all of your devices for a few hours each workday. This will allow you to completely unplug from technology and not be tempted to check on anything work-related.
5. Establish Clear Boundaries
Setting clear boundaries between your professional and personal lives is critical in maintaining a healthy balance.
With never-ending deliverables and growing demands, marketers often work overtime and past business hours to make deadlines. This makes setting a boundary between your work and personal lives difficult and even more challenging to separate the two.
The stress from a never-ending workday can be damaging and should be avoided. To combat this, create a plan or strategy to efficiently handle your heavy workload and set a clear cutoff time on your workday.
Establish a time where you completely stop checking emails and doing anything work-related. Creating a plan where you make sure you get all of your work done by a certain time allows you to unplug and relax at the end of the day. Doing so will help keep you more productive during work hours and avoid any burnout.
6. Be Productive and Accountable
No matter how hectic your personal life is, your boss still expects you to perform to a high degree.
You will need to have maximum efficiency to get everything done on time, especially as a marketer. Take ownership of your work and never cease to perform to your highest ability. To do this, you must recognize the time you have and the deadlines you need to meet. Start each day off strong and on the right foot by being productive and having a clear direction of what needs to be done from the beginning.
Focusing solely on work during business hours instead of getting distracted by browsing the Internet or checking your personal social media allows you to leave on time and enjoy your day after work. Properly setting your goals, and working to meet them on time alleviates the pressures of having to stay in the office until late at night.
Instead of trying to do it all, consider handing over certain tasks in your workplace or home to other people. This gives them an opportunity to grow and relieves some of your responsibilities; so it’s a win-win situation. Outsourcing simple things like getting a maid to take care of your home or an intern to handle basic paperwork can save you a lot of time and allow you to focus on more important things.
Hold yourself accountable and be dedicated in producing high-quality work efficiently. Getting things done on time will give you more time to focus on personal relationships and activities you enjoy.
7. Understand Where You Are in Your Career
When you’re just starting off in your marketing career, you’re most likely going to be working heavily on learning and figuring things out. As a result, it may be difficult to establish work-life balance in the beginning.
As executive recruiters, we know it only becomes more important to find a good balance as you work your way up to senior level positions and find yourself with even more demanding responsibilities.
However with any position at any level, it’s key to perform to the highest degree and recognize the efforts it will take to grow your career in the right direction.
If you can’t create a healthy balance between your professional and personal lives in the beginning, don’t give up. Everyone’s path is different – as long as you’re aware of the point you’re at in your career and the circumstances of it, you’ll be able to manage a balance between all aspects of your life.
Parting Words
It’s challenging to navigate the high demands of a marketer. And as we become more connected in a digital world, it’s easy to think that you must be working 24/7 – especially in such a fast-paced industry.
Ultimately, your personal life affects your productivity and performance at work. And any marketing talent agency knows organizations seek talent that’s able to manage both parts effectively, especially for executive roles. Don’t risk your well-being or career due to overworking – take steps to take control over your life and career now.