It’s easy to carry the stress of home to work, and work to home. Doing so will most likely inhibit your time to relax with friends, family, and your productivity in the work place. Budget your time accordingly for each aspect of life to avoid the chaos that comes with overlapping the two.

While every job varies, you can use these tips and tailor them to your specific lifestyle.

Time Management

By allotting yourself time for all the important aspects in your life– like family, friends, and your job, you can make sure that one thing does not outweigh the other. Leave you job in its designated workspace. If it can get done the following day, it is not worth stressing over and enjoying the little down time you get after a long day at work.

Socialize

Make time for the important people in your life—virtually or in person if able. Otherwise, putting it off for the future may mean getting together five years from now. That way you don’t lose touch with close family and friends.

Personal Space

Create a time and a space at home that is strictly for your personal life. Don’t take work calls after a certain time of day or respond to work-related emails. Keep your personal space for reading, watching television, and sleep. That way, your personal space doesn’t become an environment open to stressful thoughts about work.

Communication

If something does come up at work while you are off the clock, or vice versa, allow yourself a few minutes to decide if the matter is urgent or not. Sometimes emergencies happen that may interrupt your day to day schedule. If matters are more pressing and emergency related, communicate to someone at work or at home that you are needed. Just make sure you make up for lost time wherever the interruption occurred.

Plan Ahead

In order to keep a balanced life, you will have to be organized when it comes to your schedule, that way you can plan your time accordingly and never miss a beat.

Try making plans with family and friends at the beginning of every week, or if you are really busy, at the beginning of every month. Even plan out what you think your work schedule will look like that way you are not spending too much time socializing or too much time focused on your work life. Doing so ahead of time will get you into a healthy lifestyle routine by alleviating the stress of trying to plan as you go.

You can’t account for everything in your life, sometimes off-time will be more pressing, and other times, so will your job. But allowing yourself to sit down and have a rough outline of what your day to day life should look like, can alleviate stress, and maybe even make you realize your time needs to be modified in certain areas.