Balancing Work and Personal Life

So many people say that there just aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done that they want to do. Boy, that is something that we all deal with, but then when you sit back and look at what you get done each day, there is time that you can set aside to do something else.

The something else I am talking about is making sure that you have some time to yourself and your family. For a lot of us that work from home, it is easy to keep working long after a normal workday would have ended. What is important is making sure that you stop working at a specific time most nights to ensure you have some of that personal time. Sure, emergencies are different as they may mean not stopping at a specific time.

One way to ensure that you make time for yourself, and your family, is to book the time on your calendar. It may sound a little odd, but being able to have a notification pop up on your computer or mobile device will help remind you that it is time to wrap up work for the day. Having the time also booked on your calendar means that you won’t easily give that time away for something else. Now that so many of us work from home, it’s easy to give that bit of extra time to work, forgetting that sure we don’t have the commute to deal with, but that commute time was normally time to yourself.

For some families, making rules about using communication devices during meals might also help make sure that everyone is present during the meal. Here are some ideas:

1. Have everyone put their device in one common spot, and it cannot be retrieved until after the meal is over.
2. Any phone calls or emails are to be ignored during the meal unless it is an emergency. If you run your own business or are a senior executive, a quick glance at the device is ok to determine the level of importance.
3. Devices cannot be used to search something during a meal, as that leads to not being present during the meal.

Yes, balancing work and personal life can be a challenge, but we all must remember that we need the personal life to be happy. When work starts taking over all the hours in a day it is time to sit back and make sure that time for family, and you are scheduled on the calendar just like other meetings. The other thing we need to think about is making sure that on weekends that work isn’t done, as that is time for family.

It is now time for me to walk away from my computer and spend some time with my partner. Yes, we still make sure that we book time for ourselves and time for us on our calendar. Balancing a business and personal time can be a challenge but we can all do it with a little bit of an effort.