Basic Steps Toward Work-Life Balance

For most people, juggling the demands of a career and a personal life is an ongoing challenge, especially at a time when many companies have slashed their ranks -and expect more from the survivors.

Achieving the elusive "work-life balance" can often feel like an impossible goal, especially for people who strive to give everything 100%. In today's "do more with less" competitive reality, how can we manage careers and families, and feel satisfied with both?

People who study workplace culture emphasize that someone's best individual work-life balance will vary over time. The right balance for you when you're single will change when you marry or have children. Experts also say that a few small steps can go a long way toward staying sane at work and home.

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First, prioritize. "If you want balance--and not everybody does--you have to force yourself to edit yourself personally and professionally," says Jody Miller, founder of the executive staffing firm Business Talent Group.

Consider all the things that compete for your time, and decide what to keep and what to discard. If you volunteer with three nonprofit organizations, select the most meaningful one, focus on it, and stop giving your scattered attention to all three.

"Focus on the things that are important to you, and don't do the extraneous stuff," says Miller. "It's a discipline that doesn't come too naturally to most of us."

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