Publish at May 21 2025 Updated May 21 2025
Making ends meet in a fast-changing world, where the cost of living puts extra pressure on parents to provide for their children, while at the same time offering them a serene family cocoon filled with love and respect, shows that it takes a superhuman being to achieve so much without sacrificing one aspect of one's life for another. Not that it's impossible, it's feasible, but it requires a great capacity for self-management based on in-depth self-knowledge.
Let's face it, 65% of workers believe that maintaining work-life balance is one of the biggest challenges in their lives. However, it seems that the magnitude of the task increases tenfold when it comes to women. Workers need to have more than one trick up their sleeves if they are to meet their family and professional commitments, and remain reliable and consistent. So how do these professionals go about it?
When it comes to task management, time is of the essence. It's true that a day contains 24 hours, which represents eighty-six thousand four hundred (86,400) seconds, but if we're not organized, there's never enough time to complete the multitude of tasks assigned to us.
Organizing means managing, it means focusing on crucial tasks and determining which are the most urgent. And it's the only way to make the most of your time and be efficient. Time management seems even more important when you have to meet both your professional and personal commitments, without damaging your health. On the subject of time management, Fabienne Lhomme, certified coach, professional trainer and founder of Human Hey, recognizes that balancing professional and personal life is essential. It necessarily involves prioritizing tasks while respecting one's health. After all, if you try to take on everything, you'll end up damaging your self-esteem, increasing stress and anxiety, and hello burn-out!
Yet the real balance lies in managing priority tasks over a set period of time, swapping the clock for a compass, as Fabienne Lhomme recommends. In her view, this trade-off enables us to focus on what's essential, while taking a step back.
While it's obvious that we must prioritize our activities at all costs, it's just as important to organize our working time to avoid exhaustion. The Pomodoro technique developed in the 1980s by Francesco Cirillo recommends organizing your working time in this way: 25 minutes of intensive work, followed by short breaks.
Organizing work time means prioritizing tasks, but also segmenting work time to make it less exhausting.
Being part of a social environment where you're supported in whatever way you can is a guarantee of success in reconciling your professional and personal life. Indeed, since these two spheres function as communicating vessels, the positive or negative energies that can accumulate in one sphere consequently affect the other, creating dysfunction in the individual's life.
To remedy this, life partners - in the case of a couple, to be precise - need to support and encourage each other in their respective tasks. This can be done in a variety of ways. A powerful image of this support is that of the husband of New Zealand Prime Minister Yacinda Ardern, who brought her three-month-old baby daughter to a summit in honor of Nelson Mandela at the United Nations, accompanied by her spouse, who cradled the newborn during her speech.
Clearly, this image was the source of much controversy, but I think what we should take away from it is that it's possible to reconcile professional and personal life by being well surrounded. After all, there's strength in numbers!
However, in the midst of all the work that floods our space, sometimes making us forget our own existence, we need to take some time for ourselves.
Being available for others is a noble quality, but being at the service of others can lead to numerous setbacks, including exhaustion, overwork and many other consequences. Health professionals are well aware of this reality: between crisis situations at work and managing one's private life, it is necessary to take time for oneself, in order to maintain a certain balance between the two spheres of life.
In concrete terms, it's a question of carrying out activities that give pleasure, that enable you to reconnect with yourself. A number of activities can be envisaged, such as gardening and physical exercise.
All these simple yet beneficial gestures help to keep workers productive and available for their families. This availability in turn promotes their personal development, enabling them to reconcile work and family life.
Illustration: Congerdesign on Pixabay
References
Assonance, "Équilibre vie professionnelle et vie personnelle : comment gérer?" https://www.assonance-conseil.fr/equilibre-vie-professionnelle-et-vie-personnelle-comment-gerer/
Le réseau d'éclaireurs, "How to take care of yourself and others", online https://santesaglac.gouv.qc.ca/medias/2023/07/Le-reseau-declaireurs-Prendre-soin-de-soi-et-des-autres.pdf
Soft skill and Hard skill, "L'art de gérer son temps : entre priorités et productivité", online https://www.centraltest.fr/blog/lart-de-gerer-son-temps-entre-priorites-et-productivite
Tedx Talks, "Vie professionnelle et vie privée: simple question d'équilibre?", online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPkM5P-0kw
Vingt minutes, "Etats-Unis : La Première ministre néo-zélandaise emmène son bébé de trois mois à l'ONU", online https://www.20minutes.fr/insolite/2342563-20180925-video-etats-unis-premiere-ministre-neo-zelandaise-emmene-bebe-trois-mois-onu
Vitrant Clothilde, 2014, "Prendre soin de soi pour mieux prendre soin des autres", online https://shs.cairn.info/revue-jusqu-a-la-mort-accompagner-la-vie-2024-4-page-97?lang=fr
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