Work-life balance is a term used to show that you need time for work and other aspects of your life, whether related to family or personal interests. A proverb says, "all work and no play make Jack a dull boy."

But work, or at least some contributing effort, whether paid or voluntary, is often considered essential to personal satisfaction, so it seems that 'all play' would be dull too.

Today, balancing work and personal life seems like an impossible feat. Technology has made the workers accessible 24 hours a day. Fear of losing a job encourages more working hours. In a Harvard Business School survey, 94 percent of working professionals said they worked more than 50 hours weekly, and nearly half said they worked more than 65 hours weekly.

Experts agree that the added stress of an endless workday is detrimental. Generally, it damages relationships, health, and well-being.

So, follow some practical steps to loosen the grip of stress and restore balance to our lives with Getting Things Done approach. Read on and get the benefits.

1. Pause and Denormalization: Introspect what makes you feel stressed, unbalanced, or unsatisfied right now. How do these situations affect how you work and get engaged in your job? How do they affect your personal life? What do you need to prioritize? What is missing? After mentally pausing and recognizing these factors, you begin to address them and get the inside-out of GTD.
    
2. Pay Attention to Emotions
   
   After you have increased your awareness of the current situation, check how the situations make you feel. Ask yourself, do you feel energized and fulfilled? Or are you feeling angry, resentful, or sad?

   Understanding the decisions and priorities that guide your life rationally is necessary. Still, equally important is the ability to reflect on your emotions—the ability to perceive the situations that make you feel that way. Knowing your emotional state is critical to determining the changes you want to make in your work and life.

3. Reprioritize: Raising your emotional and cognitive awareness gives you the tools you need to put things in perspective and determine how to adjust your priorities. Ask yourself: What are you willing to sacrifice, and for how long? For example, if you prioritize work over family, why do you feel it is important to prioritize your life this way? Is it indispensable? Is it inevitable? What regrets do you have? What will you regret if you continue on the path you are now?
    
4. Consider your Alternatives: Before starting a solution, consider how various aspects of your work and life might be different to better align with your priorities. What aspects of your job would you like to change? What time would you want to spend with your family or on your hobbies?
    
5. Impose Changes
   
   Finally, come into action after identifying your priorities and thinking through the options that can help you improve. This can mean "public" changes - explicitly changing what colleagues expect, such as taking on new roles designed to reduce time consumption or allow for a more compressed week model. Or "private" changes to how you work informally without trying to change the expectations of your colleagues.
   
   It is noteworthy that the above five steps are not a single act but a cycle of constant re-evaluation and improvement. Primarily if you are influenced by a culture that has been stressful for a long time, it is easy to go back to "business as usual" (whether it is a conscious decision or an unconscious one).