Maintaining a work-life balance is about separating your personal and professional lives without allowing one to encroach upon the other. Both are important, neither should be neglected.
But now, with the line between work life and home life becoming increasingly blurry amidst a global pandemic, how are people supposed to find a balance between work and personal life? And if you’re struggling to achieve work-life balance, you’re not alone.
Here are ten best balancing tips to create a better work-life balance from a community of small business owners:
Play to Your Strengths
Don’t try to be all things to all people. By focusing on your strengths, you don’t need to waste time working on weaknesses. Instead, your time can be spent on life activities that allows you to recharge, and come back to work fresh and ready to perform.
Henry Babichenko, DD, European Denture Center
Have a Conversation With Your Manager
Understand that both work flow and the flow of personal life come in waves. When work ebbs, don’t be afraid to make an investment in personal life. It’s in everyone’s best interest for you to be a star employee for the long term and not to burn out. Talk to your manager and get a sense for whether you need to balance efforts over a week, a month, a quarter or a year.
Amy Feind Reeves, JobCoachAmy
Don’t Let Business Hours Bleed Into Personal Time
The best way to achieve a better work-life balance is to resist the urge to answer work-related emails, texts, or calls outside of business hours.
Noah Downs, American Pipeline Solutions
Set Physical Boundaries
I have achieved the best work-life balance when I set physical boundaries between work and my personal life.
Kayla Centeno, Markitors
Set Time Boundaries
Set boundaries when it comes to your time. In the midst of COVID-19, it may be hard to “leave everything at the office” when your office is your home, but having set work hours helps with this.
Chris Dunkin, Portable Air
Quality Time With Family
Balance is difficult, especially now when your office is also your home. After many years of being terrible at this, I have created some rules for myself. I have learned that consistent, quality time with Family makes all the difference in my performance and attitude at work.
Debra Hildebrand, LurnAgile
Stop Living Two Mindsets
The best way to achieve a greater sense of balance between your work life and your personal life first starts with a mindset change. The underlying notion of living two separate lives immediately creates tension between the two. Instead, think of living just one life, not two.
Brian Mohr, anthym
Category Days
Create, what I call “category days”, to concentrate your business efforts on specific days (e.g. Marketing Mondays, Wrap-up Wednesday, Finance Friday, etc.). That way, you focus each day, and feel complete at the end of the day knowing you had a specific focus.
Mark Jamnik, Enjoy Life Daily
Be Present in Your Focus
Want peace of mind? Place your focus where it most needs to be at the moment. Then sit with both the benefits and consequences of your decisions. Chasing balance is what topples even the most rooted of people.
Tim Toterhi, Plotline Leadership
Prioritize Mental Health
Mental health is a very important aspect of our lives and should be on the radar of everyone who works in the HR and business fields. I took up meditation and mindfulness about five years ago (unsurprisingly around the time I started my business) and have been singing its praises ever since.
Phil Strazzulla, SelectSoftware Reviews