How do you know if your work responsibilities start infringing on your well-being? Common warning signs of work-life imbalance include:

• Bringing work home, working until very late at night and/or working on weekends
• Consistently canceling social plans due to work obligations or deadlines
• Depressed mood and/or low energy
• Poor sleep (including work-related dreams)
• Short fuse with significant other and/or children
• Change in appetite and weight

It may start innocently enough. You take on a new client or project at work. Once your boss sees that you've smoothly handled that responsibility, he or she may ask for your assistance in future projects. Or if you're a stay-at-home mother, it may begin with volunteering for an event at your child's school, after which the staff may ask you to volunteer your time for other activities.

Before you realize it, you are routinely neglecting family and friends, and you are doing equally well at ignoring your own needs, like exercising, sleeping and connecting socially. In short, your work has taken over your life.

So, what to do to get it back? Fortunately, there are several simple techniques you can use.

1. Schedule social and personal time.
While it may seem like scheduling one more thing is contradictory to cutting back — particularly scheduling social or down time — carving out dedicated time may be the only way you actually do it. Just as you would a doctor's appointment, put social activities and personal time into your calendar; in pen, not pencil.

Rebecca Rand, a licensed clinical social worker in New York, is a big proponent of this method. For example, she says, if your goal is to prepare healthy lunches for the week, take out your Palm Pilot, Treo or calendar and set aside one hour Sunday night to cook. Or if you want to reincorporate exercise into your life, make an appointment with yourself to go to the gym to ride the exercise bike for 45 minutes every Tuesday at 7pm by punching that into your organizer.

The point is to move from a general or vague idea to a specific, time-limited behavior.

"There's a greater likelihood it will happen if you schedule it. It's important to set a specific time for it," says Rand.

To further stick to your plan, Rand states that it's important to tell others about these appointments, like a therapist, spouse or friend. "If you tell it to someone else, it makes it all the more concrete."