1.1         Chores

1.1.1        Routine

The biggest key to conquer those daily chores is to have a routine. It is again not easy to stick to the routine. Depending on work, family etc situation, you may or may not be able to organise the chores always in advance. However, if there is an understanding about when to do what, it helps the day to day life manageable.

Specially in the ongoing Covid lockdown days, when you are not always sure you can manage external help to organise a large household, it is always a good idea to organise a routine.

1.1.2        Task division

If you are a two person or more household, it is also a good idea to have task division. Not everyone can cook well but someone else can always do the dishes, do the laundry, fold the clothes. This reduces the burden on one person and gives everyone some responsibility to maintain the house.

Me and my husband have a small two person household and we more or less divide the tasks anyway. While I end up cooking more often than him, he takes care of the breakfast and most of the time helps me with chopping the items.

Some of my friends also give their children small chores after a certain age. This teaches them to be self-sufficient, give them a sense of responsibility and occupies their time. This is particularly important right now as a lot of children activities and interactions have been severely restricted.

1.2         Cooking

I have made a separate section about cooking. Home made food is the healthiest way of eating. This is not always possible for a lot of us. But cooking your own food, as regularly as possible has a lot of benefits.

 First of all, it means the food is freshly prepared and served warm.

 Secondly, you have control on what goes into the food, the quantity of oil, sugar, food colours etc.

Thirdly, you can choose and experiment with recipe depending on what you have home. If the recipe calls for deep frying in oil, maybe you will try to bake it or steam it and see how it tastes.

Fourthly, It also saves a lot of money compared to take-aways or readymade food.

Additional benefits I find is stress buster. After a long strenuous day, it always helps me relax when I chop the vegetable, the precise cutting of the knife, the planning of recipe, the anticipation after the food is cooked.

Even though I am not a chef or good cook and have been a cooking regular only since the last six years or so, I prefer to take out time and cook some good meals. They are nourishing for the body, healthy and does very good job or relaxing and stress busting.

1.3         Fitness

When working from home, we tend to become negligent about moving around. When there is added restrictions in movement imposed on us, be it to the gym, meeting a loved one or taking a lazy stroll on the street, it affects us mentally and physically even more.

That is why, to have a balance, one must take care of their body and mind in all possible way.

1.3.1        Exercise

Fitness reminds us of exercise in the most obvious sense. And yes it is very important to move. WHO says adults should do a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activities in a week, that is about 21min and 42 seconds of activity each day. Between doing the chores, some light exercise that should be possible to manage. We owe it to our body to do this much of movement every damn day.

Source : Physical activity and adults,WHO

1.3.2        Mental Health

I am not an expert in mental health and I do not offer any advice in this case. I can only request you, my dear readers not to ignore your mental well being and take every step necessary for that.

1.3.3        Meditation

Meditation is one of the proven methods of concentration, focussing on to your energy and letting go of the negative thoughts. The day can start nicely with some meditation or end with letting go of the day if you meditate in the evening.

1.3.4        Hobbies

Hobbies , recreational activities should be an integral part of our adult life. It is not easy to find time for it when working, with a busy family but it is always good to cultivate an interest just for yourself. I love to read, reading is my biggest hobby. Even though I do not get the time to read these days that much, I try to set a reading goal and take 10 minutes out every day to read. In the last few years, I have become quite a hobby gardener. Nothing combats stress like gardening. Aside from the health benefits of eating fresh, organic and homegrown,  the pure joy of harvesting and eating your home grown produce is second to none. I have a whole section dedicated to gardening in this blog. You can read about my gardening journey here.

 

1.4         Family time

It goes without saying, a stable healthy family life is the foundation of a stable healthy work life. Sometimes, we are burdened with so much chores and tasks, we forget the most important people for whom we are doing all these, the loving family members.

So, please put your time in for them. We are all juggling many balls and sometimes one ball needs more importance than other. When it is time to focus on the family, please do it.

I schedule time in my calender to talk to my parents. Due to the pandemic, I could not go visit them for a long time. My lovely grandmother left us for her heavenly home on November 24,2020. When she was alive, I would schedule time to video chat with her. Due to different time zones, often it would clash with a work meeting and I would try to reschedule the meeting so that we could talk.

My mother is usually more practical and she tries to call me on the offline hours and so does my father. However, I am grateful for the time I took off for my grandma. She is no more, but her precious memories, and her encouraging words still comfort me when I tackle some difficult work situation.

1.5         Offline time

Last but not the least, sometimes the body and mind just wants to switch off. Hobby, planning, reading, cooking everything can take a hike. Sometimes all you want to do is curl up on your sofa, maybe read a book or just watch reality tv. Sometimes all you want to do is sleep.

This is important for us too. Our body and our brain is an amazing creation. But it also needs time to rest and recuperate and offline times, when necessary should be taken.

I know a lot of my readers and my friends are mothers and there is not really an option to be fully offline.  

2         Conclusion

This series of post was meant to be a two part series, an upgrade to a couple of blog posts I have written in 2019 and 2020. However I delved deeper into the whole topic and decided to create a detailed series out of it.

The post series is now eight pages long short book. You can read about all the sections related to work and life in this productivity Page here : Work-Life Balance and Productivity.

Please let me know if you find this series useful. Please let me know about any tips you used in the comments. If you have some suggestions ideas, feel free to drop a comment. If you are also someone who is into productivity, journaling and work-life balance and would love to write about it or tell us about your experience, journey or points, feel free to contact me via the contact page or over the social media channel of the blog.

Image courtesy : Christian . This was drawn exclusively by him for using in the blog and is part of the copyright of the blog. Do not publish without permission.