Having a healthy work-life balance is a difficult challenge even in the best of times, but it is becoming more and more necessary during these times of economic stagnation and uncertainty. That is why, in this week’s episode of The Civil Engineering Podcast, Ken Mika, P.E. M.ASCE, a project engineer and office leader for Geosyntec’s Green Bay, Wisconsin office will provide some great work-life balance strategies that you can use to help you along the way. Engineering Quotes: Here Are Some of the Questions I Ask Ken: How do you define work-life balance? How do you incorporate work-life balance when you have to travel for work? Is it important to take time off for important dates and milestones? How can you organize your daily tasks to improve your work-life balance? Why is it important to take time off after working many hours on a project/deadline? Can establishing a good reputation early in your career improve work-life balance? Here Are Some Key Points Discussed in This Episode About Work-Life Balance Strategies for Civil Engineers: Work-life balance means to balance the needs of your job and your personal life. This does not necessarily mean it should be 50-50. You need to assess which areas in your life are more demanding of your attention beforehand to plan accordingly. This can be challenging, but if you do it appropriately, you can be successful. Achieving a work-life balance when you travel for work is more challenging. You need to find a way to keep everyone happy. Consider taking your family along with you when traveling, and let them treat it as a short vacation and do things in the area while you work. You can then join them once you have completed your work for the day, or over weekends. You need to speak to your supervisor well in advance regarding time off for special dates. This will enable your supervisor to plan ahead of time for everything to run smoothly in your absence. You can also put in extra hours before or after the special date to make sure your work stays up to date. You can delegate some of the work that needs to be done to someone with a lower position than you. This will also help them on their career path by getting exposure and experience. For task management, regularly look at your upcoming tasks and determine what is important or urgent and what is not. Plan your day and time according to the importance or the urgency of your tasks and decide which tasks you can delegate to someone else to get it done. If you are working on a big task or project, see if it will be possible to take a day or two off after the project deadline to decompress and spend time with your family. This will be beneficial to you because you will be able to have a fresh start when you go back to work. To develop a good reputation in your job, you need to always come through when someone assigns a task to you. If there are any complications, you need to communicate them as soon as they are brought to your attention. Be open to many different opportunities early in your career as this will help you to see what you enjoy doing and which career path you would like to follow. All these things will let people see that they can depend on you and in turn, they will be more willing to help you when you need time off for personal matters. More Details in This Episode… About Ken Mika, P.E., M.ASCE Ken is a strategic leader with a proven record of the ability to evaluate, build, and implement process improvements within and across teams. He has experience in field data collection in multiple media, experience with staffing and field resource allocation, remedial design and contractor procurement, construction management, and can build and maintain cooperative teaming relationships.