Balancing career and family is always difficult, and it’s all the more challenging for entrepreneurs—those of us who feel like we have to be and do all things for our company. As such, it’s no surprise that so many successful people seek answers about work-life balance—secrets of effective time management and priority juggling.
Perhaps the biggest secret is that there are no secrets; there’s no magic bullet, no magic formula to make work-life balance achievable. It all comes down to being smart, strategic, and protective of your time.
For those who are seeking a better balance between their personal and professional lives, we recommend a few tried and true solutions.
- Outsource more. There are certain tasks that you, as a business owner, need to do yourself—but these are also tasks that are simple and repeatable, tasks that could very easily be done by a vendor or an outside party. For example, there’s really no reason for you to spend hours wrapped up in Quickbooks when there are plenty of accounting and bookkeeping firms that can ably assist you. But outsourcing isn’t just about your professional responsibilities, but your personal ones, too. For instance, if you only have two or three spare hours this Saturday, you’d probably rather spend them with your spouse or your kids than with your lawn mower, so why not outsource your lawn maintenance?
- Use calendars. To really be protective of your personal and family time, you’ll need to actually schedule it. Use your calendar to mark off a block of time for lunch with your family, drinks with your friends, a date with your significant other, or whatever else. And don’t just make use of your own calendar; encourage your friends and loved ones to share their calendars with you (Google Calendar is great for this) so that you can keep tabs on one another and fit in time together whenever possible.
- Be more mindful of your time. More broadly, it pays to think of your time in terms of categories, and to develop healthy routines. Maybe your early morning hours are when you take some me time, working out and reading the paper. Your daytime hours are for work. Evenings are for family, and maybe there is an hour or so before bed when you can get some blogging or other extracurricular projects done. Think about when you’re most productive, when you’re most likely to have the availability of your family, etc., and map out your days accordingly.
- Be present in each task. When you are with your friends and family, turn off your phone. That can be a painful thing for successful professionals to do, but you owe it to your loved ones—and to yourself—to really be there, available, in each moment.
Work-life balance takes some hard work to achieve—but it’s worth it for the more vibrant and fulfilling life that it brings.