(Radio Iowa) – When it’s ridiculously cold outside or the deep snow prevents us from doing things we enjoy, Iowans may find themselves scrolling on their phones. That can create work-life balance issues because many of us are connected to our jobs through our devices. Amber Sherman, a licensed clinical social worker in Iowa, says we all need to learn to log out and get away from work, especially on snow days. “That dedicated time to totally unplug and not be answering emails and logged into things like Teams and Slack and all this stuff,” Sherman says. “It’s important to log off from time to time and get that respite and kind of mind break. I encourage all the people that I work with to take that time for themselves so they have enough leftover for their family and the rest of their life.”
Even when we take vacations, some of us stay connected to work and she says that can be unhealthy. “Make sure that your time off is actually time off, and that you resist that urge to, ‘Oh, I can be reached by my cell phone and I’ll be checking email occasionally,'” Sherman says. “I really encourage people to resist that if they possibly can, because being able to disconnect and renew yourself is super-important for a balanced life.”
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People in certain jobs, including the health care profession, might find it hard to break the habit and disconnect. “Because we’re helpers, right? We want to take care of people,” Sherman says. “There’s also a mission behind the work that we do. It’s not just a job that you go to to pay your bills. It’s something that you really believe in and so it all makes sense why we would have trouble with logging out taking time for ourselves.”
It’s something of a misnomer to talk about one’s work-life balance, she says, as it should really be a life-work balance. “It’s great to have a mission and it’s wonderful to be very engaged in your job, but the scale should really tip toward the rest of my life,” Sherman says. “A lot of people struggle when their identity is so tied to what they’re doing for their job. And then what happens if that changes or shifts and you have a big event, we have to do something different. That’s a big deal.”
Sherman is manager of the Employee Assistance Program at Gundersen Health System, which has clinics in Fayette, Decorah, Waukon, Lansing, Postville and Calmar, and a hospital in West Union.
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