All businesses will require too much work until they become independent in some way from everyday direct intervention from entrepreneurs. Because of that, work-life balance is something that many entrepreneurs struggle with.
As an entrepreneur, you already spend too much time planning, generating ideas, opportunity recognition, marketing, selling, research and development, managing, finances…
But, where are you here? What’s your compensation for your time and all of these efforts? You have your own life before and after you start a business. Also, you are living with your family. You have your greatest treasure – your family and especially your children.
One of the frequently asked questions that comes to each entrepreneur is questions related to work-life balance. Probably you already have asked yourself the following questions:
- How can I balance my work and my life?
- How can I balance my work and my home life?
- What do I need to do to achieve a better work-life balance?
- How can I balance my work and my personal life?
What Does It Mean Work-Life Balance?
When we talk about work-life balance, we think about balancing our work life with our personal life in most cases. What is more important for you: work or family, business or family? This question is a really complex question when it comes to the entrepreneur.
In the simplest form, work-life balance is managing your work and non-work aspects of your business and the non-business aspect of your entrepreneurial life. However, you are working because you want to make a better living for yourself and your family. Therefore, if I need to define something about work-life balance, I will tell this:
Sometimes, there are wrong concepts between entrepreneurs who say that they must work more if they want to earn more. In the post titled “More Working Hours Doesn’t Mean More Work Done,” I have presented four important factors that have a strong influence on your entrepreneurial productivity. If more working hours don’t mean more work done, then more working hours also doesn’t mean more entrepreneurial earnings.
Here I want to share a great inspirational TED Talk from Nigel Marsh. The talk is related to work-life balance, which we forget as one of the most important things in our entrepreneurial life.
Managing Work-Life Balance
Managing work-life balance is something that can eliminate stress and improve your overall life as an entrepreneur. This means that you must start managing your own time, plan your activities, understand your priorities. Also, you need to know exactly what satisfy you and what doesn’t satisfy you, know exactly what creates value for your customers, but also you and your family…
Here I will share some pieces of advice that can help you in ensuring your own work-life balance:
- Plan your day, week, month, and year related to your business and non-business activities. Your plan must be based on your business and personal goals.
- Control your promises and achievement of everything that you plan for your business and your personal life.
- Organize your business and personal activities. If you are not an organized entrepreneur, you can’t make enough balance between your personal and business activities.
- Motivate yourself, your family, and your employees to accomplish the tasks that all of them must accomplish.
Work-Life Balance Tips
Let’s continue with some additional tips related to your efforts to establish a real work-life balance for yourself.
- Separate your whole time as work time and personal time.
- Create a list of top priorities.
- Forget low-priority items, don’t bother yourself with them.
- Use a timer or alarm that will remind you to stop working for today.
- Use the same planner for work and non-work activities. Let’s left side be for working activities and the right side for non-working activities.
- Be sure that each week you have prepared a schedule for the next week. Then, you can answer these ten questions that you should ask before the start of the next week.
- Start delegating everything that can be done by others and not from you.
- Promise only what you can deliver to family and your clients/customers.
- Clearly define what is expected of you when it comes to your company and your family.
- Start listening to your body.
