Maintaining a work-life balance is very crucial for working moms. It allows you to enjoy work and still have a fulfilling life by incorporating other aspects of life other than work such as family and friends.
However, this balance is very hard to achieve for moms working nights, as they have different work hours and social hours from other people. You sleep when others are working and working when others are sleeping.
Working night shift makes you miss out on social events, those happening at work when you are working and those happening during the day as you are sleeping.
Everyone deserves a fulfilling life hence it is possible to enjoy a vibrant social life even when working night shift. Everyone should and can have a thriving social life no matter the hours of work they do.
Some things you can try include making friends with people who also work night shift, have a social life schedule, and self care among others.
How Night Shift Affects Moms Social life
- Fewer Social Events– One of the drawbacks of working shifts for moms is because it leaves few options of social events for you. You are limited to the kind of activities you can attend as most events happen when you are either working or sleeping.
- Odd Social Hours– You are limited to the hours you can use for social life to either early in the morning or late in the evening.
- Missing out on Night Social Events– When you are working night shift, it means you are not available for any social event. You miss out on some night events and weekend social events. Also you must work on a plan and hence highly unlikely to go on social outings not earlier planned for.
- Withered Social Relations– If you are working night shift, there are high chances that your friends are working day. You may hence not see them as often as needed. Your relationships wither out as you attend fewer events. You also often turn down friends and family invitations.
- Poor Sleep Habits-When you are working at night, your social life competing with your sleep, which are all equally important. You are unable to attend activities during the days as you need to sleep hence your social life suffers in return.
How to Have a Thriving Social Life when Working Night Shift
1. Make Friends with People Who Work Night Shift
One of the easiest ways to solve your social life dilemma if you work night shift is to make friends with people who also work night shifts. You will easily make and keep good friends if you try those working night shift too. It will make it easier for you and them to have fun and do interesting things together.
The secret is to thriving social life is having friends working the same hours as you. It is a lot easier to socialize since you have free time around the same time. Therefore you are unlikely to miss out on key outings, meet-ups among other social things with your friends.
You can meet during the days or night when both of you are not working or sleeping.
The move may mean that you may lose your old friends. It is very unfortunate but if possible try to still keep in touch once in a while. The most important thing is that you are now having adequate social interactions that align with your work and social schedule.
2. Create A Social Life Schedule For Friends/Family
Planning is one of the effective ways of ensuring you still have some social events while working night shifts. Therefore know and plan the things you are doing with your family/friends. You can make it weekly or even monthly.
Planning makes it easier for you to be deliberate about showing up. It does not sound ideal as some fun events and meetups happen impromptu but planning is very crucial.
It allows you to plan head on getting necessary things done and getting enough sleep for you to have quality social time with your friends/family. E.g. you may need to do some shopping, get your hair done, or arrange for childcare for your kids.
Be reasonable and realistic in planning. Do not live like you work the day shift while working the night shift. You need to find the most practical routine to enjoy both work and social life without harming yourself. Your sleep and health will suffer if your try to stuff in so many social things at the same time.
3. Balance Sleep, Work and Social Life
Divide the 24 hours of your day to these three important aspects of life
- 8 hours of work during the night
- 8 hours of sleeping during the day
- 8 hours of personal errands which includes meeting up with friends, your hobbies, family time , self care, dinner dates etc. You can schedule meets up immediately after work in the morning or evening before work.
If you set aside 8 hours per day for your social life, you will have enough to ensure that your family and friends are not socially neglected. Let your family plan things later during the day so that you can sleep in more and still join them later.
Sleep as soon as you get off work as it lets you unwind, decompress, and refresh for any social activities you may engage in in the afternoon.
Prioritize on things that you REALLY care about. Don’t try to do everything. Avoid feeling like you are missing out. You cannot attend to everything and hence you need to choose which social events and meet ups are important for you then.
4. Adopt a Consistent Sleep Schedule
Depending on the time that you get on and off your shift, you can create a more effective and productive sleep schedule. The schedule should allow you to have adequate sleep and still have a few hours to spare for family and friends before you get to work.
You can do this in several ways.
- Try to sleep during the mornings immediately from work and have afternoons free for family and friends. For instance, you can spend the afternoon before work with the family on specific set days.
- Alternatively, try to have mornings free for family and friends and sleep during the afternoon before getting to work. However, you need some time to decompress and unwind from work before you can have any quality time with friends and family.
Read: How to create a healthy sleep patterns for moms working night shift
5. Prioritize Self-care
You need to look after yourself to have a helathy social life. East well balaned diet, have hobbies and personal pursuits. Also ensure you have at least 8 hours of sleep and taking care of your mental health.
Having a poor social life can affect your mental health and make you easily irritated, hard to relate to, and even depressed. Do not sacrifice sleep for a social life. You need sleep first for you to have quality social time with friends or family.
6. Take Advantage of Off Days
If your schedule is too tight, then on the off days when you are not working are your most convenient time to spend with friends and family.
Luckily if you have many off days in a row you can use this time to spend time with your friends and family. Try to fulfill as many social commitments around this time as you can.
Nonetheless show effort, communication, and have reasonable expectations . Just let people know when you are off. If they want on work on your schedule, then good for you, if not just be as flexible as you can.
Sleep Tips for Night Shift Moms to Create Social Time
- Avoid Flipping Sleep for Social Activities. Adequate quality sleep is important and flipping your sleep pattern affects your productivity at work and moods at your social events, making them poor quality social time.
- Don’t Stay up during the day on Days Off. You must not try to sleep on a “normal” schedule on your days off– you can push your normal sleep hours back/forward a little bit, but don’t try to stay up through the day and sleep at night.
- Avoid Oversleeping- Get JUST the enough sleep. If you sleep too long, you may use up your social time. If you don’t sleep enough you will have poor quality social time and low work productivity. Don’t let sleep offset your work and social life schedule.
- Amplify the Quality of your Sleep– if need be use black-out curtains, blindfolds, earplugs, and a white noise machine so that you can have at least 8 hours of quality and uninterrupted sleep.
- Have Strict sleep Boundaries– Don’t feel bad at all for sometimes not picking up the phone or missing something because you need to sleep.
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