I used to work long days – often 10 to 12 hours, taking work home with me, working after dinner into the night.

I used to think my hard work would result in engaged learners who achieved well.

I dreamed of being recognised by senior leaders for my excellent work.

I spent days feeling washed out, tired, lacking energy and missing out on family times.

I knew that I needed to change the way I worked, the way I viewed life. Squashing in family and friends events made me feel lost and angry. Something needed to change.

A Slow Realisation

Now, I don’t work that like that.

I work for myself, teaching students online, doing some consultancy work for schools, coding and writing articles about teaching, learning and coding.

I look after myself as best I can and I try to be kind to myself.

I do what I can to make every day as good a day as good as it can be. I have more power now to adjust how I work and how I look after myself.

Looking after myself well started 12 years ago when I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. For a while, I had been feeling so tired, so much so that getting out of bed in the morning to start the day was a huge effort. Then when I got home I would want to crawl into bed. My body ached. My head ached. I had little energy.

Eventually I went to the doctor and then onto a specialist who diagnosed me with an autoimmune condition. I was told that I had to go on medication immediately, if I didn’t major organs in my body could fail very quickly.

That scared me. I took a good long look at myself and decided I needed to change my lifestyle.

Changes

I started regularly attending yoga classes, swimming and trying very hard to do some gym classes. The gym classes usually didn’t turn out well. I’m no good at running, doing circuits or working on those gym machines and I am very good at getting distracted on them so that I lose my balance and somehow fall off them or lose my rhythm on the ones that work your arms and legs at the same time.

Sometimes I would join a body conditioning class and end up embarrassed at the back of the room as the instructor adapted exercises for just me to do.

I also started going to dance classes and trying to lose some weight. Dancing was fun and helped me get back some of that lost energy. Unfortunately the medication I was taking gave me lots of extra aches and pains as it reset my immune system. I could only dance for a limited period of time but when I danced I felt so free, an inner excitement at being able to experience moving to the rhythm of music, sometimes with a partner.

Dancing helped me to feel so much better about getting better.

Sorting out my work life balance

Often at school in the staffroom I would talk to my colleagues about my work life balance. We would talk about our plans for the weekend, then talk about how we never got round to them because school work took over.

If we were lucky we would get one day off at the weekend to do what we wanted to do with our families. Sometimes there seemed to be no break between the weekend and Monday. The weekend would just vanish in a flash if school work was done.

Work life balance for teachers is one of the most discussed topics in the world of education.

It can be hard to let go of teaching and enjoy the time you have after school to enjoy things that are good for you as a teacher, physically and mentally.

After I worked on those changes in my life, I worked hard to keep doing them, by introducing a routine that I try to stick to each day.

1. Set goals for each day.

Each day I aim to do 20 minutes of yoga, 15 minutes of meditation, 1 hour of walking and 5 hours of sitting in my home office working, either teaching students, writing or coding.

Walking in nature does me good, I am lucky to have a dog and some lovely parks near me. Walking through those and breathing the fresh air, feeling the sunshine on my face and watching how nature changes with the seasons helps me feel good inside.

The yoga keeps my joints flexible, although as I have got older I have had to work harder on my yoga, so I keep an eye on postures that cause me pain and try to change those for others that don’t put so much pressure on my joints. My aim is to join a regular yoga class each week and to feel good after I’ve finished it.

2. Have a clear end of working day

Each day I stop working at a set time. Tasks that are not finished remain unfinished.

I note down in my notes app on my phone what remains to be done next day and then stop working. I decided not to push myself to finish tasks as they can take some time to completed and before I know it my working day has been extended by several hours.

It’s not worth it for me. I want time to spend with my family each day making memories and just letting myself relax.

3. Shut down routine

This is so important for me. I turn off my laptop around 2 hours before I intend to go to bed. I’ve found that even just browsing reactivates my mind and I can easily stay on it far longer than I would like.

So I turn it off and then sit and listen to music and read quietly. Interestingly reading doesn’t stimulate my brain like being on my laptop does. I like to read stories that are well written, sometimes historical novels, sometimes thrillers, sometimes stories of hope and inspiration.

Finally around 1 hour before I go to bed, I take my dog for a walk for the final time in the day and when I get back I make a herbal tea. Then I will spend a while with my family talking about all sorts of things, not work based things though, and then head off to bed.

Other things I do to keep my work/life balance in check

During holiday times I give myself permission to relax.

I don’t do any marking, any communication with parents and I try to go away somewhere different and take time to explore where I am. I like to go on short trips and learn about those places I visit.

I like to create some time and space for reflection.

As a chronic overthinker, I need to press the stop button whenever my mind goes wandering off down other tracks. When I reflect on what I’ve achieved over a space of time I like to think about how I can overcome barriers that I have encountered, how to communicate better with others and think about alternative ways to reach my goals.

When working from home, I acknowledge and accept that there will always be more to do than there is time to do it.

So I need to prioritise well. I do my best to cut out “dead time”. Dead time for me is excessive time spent browsing on line or talking to people for too long. I like to spend a maximum of 30 minutes per day going through my emails, and I don’t spend ages analysing them or replying to them.

I keep my emails brief and to the point. I take at least 30 minutes for lunch each day. On line meetings or face to face meetings are kept to a minimum.

I tell my students that I will only mark their tests and it is up to them to mark their homework with the solutions I provide, before our lesson so that we can just go through the questions they would like to focus on more.

It’s their responsibility to let me know what these are. Most of my students realise that self marking helps them learn better and are happy to do this.

I’m getting better at not over committing myself to different tasks. As a freelancer I have control over who I work with and how I work. I used to fear that if I turned down work it would dry up and I would not be able to pay my bills.

That hasn’t happened so far so my fears were groundless.

Now I am smarter and realise that being careful about the tasks I take on is important. It allows me to do the best I can on each task I take on and also to teach the students I have decided to teach to the best of my ability.

Planning for each class you teach can be hard work, so make it easier to save time and effort. Use prepared resources whilst accepting that there are no perfect resources. Build a bank of resources that you can use for each of your classes and reuse them whenever necessary.

When you need to write reports on students, try to plan ahead and complete a certain number each day so that you are able to meet the deadline.

Being Kind to Yourself

I’ve found that knowing my limits and setting boundaries for how I work is important.

I make sure that I know that I can achieve all the goals I’ve set myself within a timeframe that I’ve specified.

I try to feel confident in what I do and I’ve learned to speak out if there are things that I can’t complete yet. Communication plays a big part in what I do so I spend time improving that whenever I can.

Being kind to yourself will begin to reap rewards in time. More time to spend with your family and friends, time to build good memories. Time to find out what suits you, time to relax and time to reflect and refresh.