By Tsz Yan (Student Blogger: MSc Business Analytics)
We all know that study is a difficult but important task for most of us. Therefore, some people put all their time into study so as to achieve better academic performance. However, this belief is misleading and may harm our academic performance in the long term. Indeed, having a good work-life balance is a more appropriate way for our study or even life journey.
Firstly, a good work-life balance is able to improve our mental health and therefore academic performance. Whilst studying, we are easily getting to a stage of “burnout” and “stress”. In this stage, your study capability and productivity will decrease because you might feel you can’t understand what you are studying. Therefore, there is a need to take a rest. Try to go outside and have a walk, or chat with your friends/ family members, or even sleep. This will help you to eliminate negative thinking and refresh yourself. As a result, you may “suddenly” understand the knowledge you didn’t understand previously and therefore enhance your study efficiency. To conclude, a good work-life balance is able to improve our mental health and therefore academic performance.
Secondly, a good work-life balance is able to improve our physical health and therefore academic performance. But what does this mean? It means that we need to do exercise regularly. Exercise is really important and can support our study by helping us to perform better academically. Imagine what would happen if you only concentrated on study without doing any exercise, you would have relatively weak physical health. When you have relatively weak physical health, it is easy for you to feel exhausted or even become ill. In this stage, you are not able to focus on your study due to your body status. Therefore, it proves that exercising is needed in your study life in order to enhance your study efficiency and effectiveness. To conclude, a good work-life balance is able to improve our physical health and therefore academic performance.
In fact, we should think more broadly on the benefit of having a good work-life balance. Not only can it improve your academic performance in the short term, but it can also help you build up interpersonal relationships and broaden your horizons. In our studying life, we should go outside to make new friends with different people. We can share a different opinion on any issue and sometimes they may even have some insight on particular things we don’t know. Discussion and communication with friends can help you to broaden your horizons, which may indirectly help you to solve any academic difficulty you face. On the other hand, building up interpersonal relationships can also have benefits not only for your study but also for your life journey in facing any circumstances (such as difficult work situations later in life), since they may provide different angles and insights on these issues and help you face these challenges. To conclude, a good work-life balance is able to improve our study and even life journey.
To sum up, it is essential to maintain a good work-life balance. Firstly, it can help you to improve your mental and physical health so as to improve your academic performance. Secondly, it can help you to build up interpersonal relationships and broaden your horizons so as to improve your academic performance and even life journey. Therefore, I encourage you to have your own work-life balance. Good Luck with your study and life journey!