If you’re passionate and devoted to your career, there’s a good chance that you’ve spent additional time outside of the typical 40 hour work week finishing work-related tasks. When your work life spills over into your personal time, it’s undoubtedly a sign of dedication, but it can also be dangerous to your overall health.

Your time away from work should be just that, time away. Your free time should be spent engaging in activities that you enjoy with family and friends; but quite often we tend to mix our worlds, leaving ourselves vulnerable to burn out. In light of Stress Awareness Month, we’re sharing a few ways in which you can maintain a healthy work/life balance and keep your stress levels at a minimum. These tips will help you maximize time off and feel rested and refreshed when you return to work.

Maintain a Self-Care Routine

Although you may be spent after a long day of work, making time for yourself after the work day is essential in breaking free from stressors in your life. Self-care is an ever-popular buzzword open to more than one interpretation. The consensus, however, is that self-care is an act or practice of some sort that makes you feel good, and therefore is something you should engage in as often as possible. Maybe your idea of self-care is a beauty-focused routine complete with the application of your favorite anti-aging cream followed up with a facial rolling session via our Rose Quartz roller. Alternatively, you may find you feel your best while sweating away your stress. In this case, your happy place may be a running trail or your local fitness center. Whether you roll it away or sweat it out, releasing your stress is a great way to prevent burn out and ensure you’re on top of your game when you return to work.

Properly Manage Your Time

We’ve all had those days that seem to fly by, but leave us feel unaccomplished work-wise, especially when we have a ton on our plate. Making a good faith effort to appropriately and efficiently manage your time by prioritizing your tasks can truly save your sanity in both the short and long term. You may think your boss is impressed that you’re taking your work home with you, but think about how impressed he or she would really be if you accomplished what you needed to during your work hours. Not to mention the sense of pride and relief that you would feel! But if you find yourself struggling in this department, there are plenty of simple tricks to sharpen your time management skills. Not everyone will be a pro at this overnight, but if you’re honest with yourself and work on the areas you need to strengthen, slowly but surely, you will find yourself spending less of your free time with your laptop or phone attached to your hip!

Make Your Time Off About You

This suggestion may seem like a no-brainer, but how many weekends have you spent cleaning your house or running unenjoyable errands? Tasks like these can swallow up all of our time off and before you know it, it’s Sunday night and you’re heading back to work in just a few short hours. Everyone has obligations and responsibilities but a great way to maximize your time on the weekends or during your vacation is to get chores out of the way early, or even make an effort to keep up with them by spreading them out throughout the week. If you’re fortunate to work for a company that offers vacation time or PTO, take it! Whether it’s a trip around the world or a staycation spent with your family, time away from the office provides endless benefits, not to mention an opportunity to reset and recharge. To ensure your mind is in complete vacation mode, check with your boss before your time off begins to see if you’re expected to be available while you’re away. Depending on how you choose to spend it, you may even want to let them know you won’t have access to email or your phone so that they can make an alternate plan in case a work emergency arises.

Taking pride in your career is certainly an admirable trait and one that should be recognized. However, too much focus and time on your work and not enough dedication to your personal life may result in more stress than you know what to do with. We shared with you just a few ways in which you can maintain a healthy work/life balance, and we hope they leave you feeling liberated both mentally and physically.