Maintaining Work-life Balance As A Small Business Owner

To succeed at work, have a life! To have the knowledge of finding a stable point between your work and personal life is to have a work-life balance.

It is the idea that one’s life outside of work is just as substantial as their work-life and as such, the time a person spends working should balance the time spent doing personal activities. This notion also brings attention to the fact that not having a work-life balance, even as a small business owner, can be detrimental to a person’s well-being.

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And consequently, if spending too much time working or letting work interfere with your personal life is or has been a problem, you may have a work addiction. To find a suitable balance, however, you must resolve to improve your all-round character. Most people find that making an effort to incorporate time management into their lives considerably improves their work-life balance. 

It is necessary to note that work-life balance does not mean equal hours; this is a popular misconception that is most likely to end with an unsatisfactory experience. The Business Dictionary defines work-life balance as a comfortable state of equilibrium achieved between one’s primary priorities of their employment and their private lifestyle.

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As a small business owner, there is a constant need to find this equilibrium between a budding business and a vital personal life. However, to be successful in both areas doesn’t mean you have equal hours at home and work. It means you have found a pace that fulfills both sides.

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Studies have shown that people who have a healthy work-life balance do a better job at work, so encouraging this balance is beneficial to individuals and businesses. Here are some helpful methods to adopt and maintain this balance:

Ways to Maintain Work-Life Balance

Be Intentional

Being deliberate about your decisions. Actions is a failproof way to achieve anything. Regularly remind yourself why you need to make certain lifestyle changes and be self-disciplined enough to go through with it. Make conscious choices to ensure that you focus on maintaining that healthy work-life balance you need. You must want it hard enough to get it.

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Create Schedules

Scheduling allows you to arrange, control, and optimize activities around you, maximize efficiency, and reduce stress. Reserve set times in your schedule for activities that allow you to add value to your private life, such as daily exercise, a weekly social night, or a yearly family vacation.

This gives you something to look forward to and serves as a motivation to manage your work-life well and enable you to carry out your plans. There are times however where schedules might be tighter, and you may have to overplay one area. In those times, you must readjust your schedules or outlooks and give as much more to the other area.

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Set Boundaries

Boundaries are a good way to maintain your work-life balance. Learn to maintain strict margins and principles on how you manage your affairs. Set work hours for yourself and stick to them.

You may think you would but you’re not going to lose that client or business if you don’t reply to that email at 11 pm during an important family occasion. If you make yourself available at all hours as a small business, you are bound to set a dangerous precedent.

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Take That Break

You’ve done well, you deserve a reward, so take that vacation. Freedom is a big reason why you started your business in the first place, so why allow it to continuously tie you down? Design your business to allow time for breaks and relaxations.

The impact a time-out has on the control over your day cannot be overemphasized seeing as the natural disposition for most entrepreneurs is to work round the clock. Learn to unplug and take that much-needed rest and make quality time, true quality time.

Exercise Regularly

Even when we’re busy, we make time for the crucial things in life like eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom. Yet, we always seem to make excuses for why we have no time to exercise, forgetting the importance of exercising to the body.

Exercise is an effective and cost-free stress reducer. It pumps feel-good endorphins through your body and improves productivity by helping to lift your mood. Dedicate time each week to self-care, whether it’s exercise, yoga, or meditation, and watch your work-life balance develop.

Learn to Delegate.

Many small business owners, particularly those who started their businesses from scratch, have a great deal of difficulty delegating. Fear of loss of control or spending money and inability to trust are the usual reasons. While you may be good at most things, you can’t do it all.

Good quality of an entrepreneur that also helps relationships is to stay focused on your unique genius, the things that nobody else can do, and then put your energies into hiring or outsourcing the rest. If your budget won’t allow it, get creative and delegate more of your life duties instead. Delegating tasks allows for more quality and productive time. This also applies to your home and personal environment.

Reframe Your Mindset

Let go of fear. Many entrepreneurs struggle with the fear of a failed business that results if they’re not working every minute that they could be working. However, letting go of this fear not only leads to work-life balance but also more meaningful productivity and accomplishment. It also enables a growth mindset that would ultimately be more beneficial to your business.

Enforce This Lifestyle

These days so many people are focused on getting funding, explosive growth, and spending so much time on their business that they forget about their personal lives. While being business-minded is great, too much mindfulness can lead to burn-out and unhappiness quickly.

Make the work-life balance lifestyle the most important factor in your business from the setup, and then grow with that principle in mind. Building a lifestyle into Your Brand is a sure way to maintain it.

Learn To Say No

As an entrepreneur, it can be easy to say yes to every client, opportunity, and task that comes your way. It can be hard, even scary, to say no lest you miss out on ‘breakthroughs. But to have any chance of keeping your head above water and maintaining a healthy career balance and business, saying no when necessary is vital.

Embrace Mobile Tech

Technology allows the ability to integrate your work and life, now more than ever and even so with mobile capabilities. From office documents to the private calendars, your schedules and to-do reminders can fit in the device that you slip into your pocket.

Using a cloud-based service also allows you to access and work on your documents anytime, anywhere. However, strict precautions must be taken to reduce expectations of constant availability.

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Limit Distractions

Here, it is necessary to identify what’s most important in your life and draw firm boundaries to enable you to devote quality time to these high-priority activities and people. With that, it will be easier to determine what needs to be removed from the schedule.

Limit time-wasting activities and people and manage your time wisely. Time managed properly is quality time for your different activities. Focus on the people and activities that reward you the most and Ignore activities, not in line with your goals. Occasionally, do a calendar audit and decide if those actions are really worth your time.

These days, work-life balance can seem like an impossible feat especially from working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You either find yourself sucked more into your work or personal life while the other suffers. With technology making business owners accessible around the clock and the economic meltdown, fears of profit decline now provoke longer work hours.

In truth, work-life balance means something different to every individual. Nevertheless, there is no denying the importance of maintaining an effective and healthy equilibrium.

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