How is your work life balance?

[JulianCasa]

I’m having to work 2-3 hours a night, 4-5 nights a week. I do 40/45 hours actually physically at my job too. It’s not a flexible wfh type job.

I know I need to get out. But I’m wondering if I’ll be out of the frying pan and into the fire or whether other jobs have better work life balance.

So, please tell me what you do and if you have a good work life balance? I am on £40k but I’d actually happily drop down £10k as I’m not actually living my life and it’s not worth it.

I was a teacher and it was very stressful and work life balance was rubbish. I changed roles, dropped wages by about half and was much happier. 5 years later I'm bored and re training.

Mine is terrible. I'm a teacher. We have lots of new initiatives, curriculum changes and staff off. Was marking at 4.30 this morning. I can't take much more. Am out of house nearli 12 h and then have work to do after eaten.

Another civil servant here, there are loads of former teachers at work! Great work/life balance, I work 30 hours a week, 2 from home and 2 in the office. Flexitime so can pop out for random school events in the middle of the day or get extra hours I work back. I would be on 36k if I was full time

@cuddlebear how did you find this job? I have experience facilitating adult learning sessions so I think I could do this but then again age is possibly against me.

At the moment it’s great as I’m doing hybrid in my home office and WFH so I have a short or no commute and don’t work much more than my contracted hours. BUT i have periods when I work away in client offices and can be leaving home at 6:30-7am, away for a couple of night, work long days while away and get home at 8pm exhausted which then has a knock on effect to everything else. But I get paid pretty well for the amount of stress I’m under and my typical work life balance.

Mine now is great. We had a webinar on work life balance and how to manage stress and make tume for yourself this week actually. Most are wfh roles where I am now but lots of online resources like meditation classes and therapy we can access free if we want. The balance is about prioritising your well being really, however that may be possible.

I'm sure you've looked at ways to reduce the extra work you do but have you discussed with others? Is anyone doing it differently and having better results? Can you outsource anything? Even if you get half an hour back it's a start. Have you discussed some of the more specific issues on teacher forums?

If you do look at other roles, remember it's not just about hours. I worked for a company where we never had to work late or start early but we were never able to get any down time during the day. To the point it made people ill with the stress of it. Insane deadlines that one manager always made sure we hit so the higher managers never realised how relentless it was, and then kept increasing the work. As mentioned before, see what Glassdoor etc. have to say as a good starting point.