Why is work/life balance important?

Why should we bother about how many hours we work? Why does it matter?

There are 168 hours in the week.  Assuming an eight-hour sleep period each night, we spend 56 hours asleep.  So that leaves us with 112 waking hours.

The Working Time Regulations (in the UK) set a limit upon working time of 48 hours per week.  This is time spent at work, excluding travel from home to work.  One simple way of understanding it is that it limits you to 6 working days of 8 hours each.

Suppose you have one job in which you work 36 hours per week, and you take on another job.  You are limited to a maximum of 12 hours per week in the second job.

After doing this, you are left with 64 hours per week.  But before you get too excited about all this time, think about all the other things you need to do: get up, wash or shower and get dressed, eat something, travel to work, have your meal break at work (meal breaks aren't included in the 48 hours), travel home again, prepare and eat a meal - and finally get ready for bed.

For someone with a long-ish commute, the working day could look like this:

Morning routine - 1 hour
Travel to work - 1 hour
Morning at work - 4 hours
Lunch break - 30 minutes
Afternoon at work - 4 hours
Travel home from work - 1 hour
Evening meal etc - 1 hour
Evening routine - 30 minutes

This totals 13 hours.  Add in 8 hours sleep, and you get 21 hours.  In theory you have 3 hours free time per day, for 6 days of the week - and the remaining day is free for you to use however you wish.

However, if you have commitments outside of work, or if you are working on building up a business in your spare time, you can expect to have conflicting demands on your time.  And as one of our directors discovered, you need to manage your free time assertively, otherwise it will be stolen from you.

Hence work/life balance, and the importance of blocking out time for yourself and your family and friends.

But... what can you do with your free time?  Here are some suggestions:

• Something that sparks your imagination
• Something creative
• Some sort of exercise
• Something social

We've deliberately avoided recommending specific activities.  However, if you don't currently read much, a tip from our senior consultant is: read something (anything - preferably a book) most days.  The more good writing you consume, the better your own writing will be.

If you have any tips of your own, we'd love you to share them with us in the comments.