4 Ways to Improve Your Life-Work Balance Today

Most of us have to work, well because money. Many of us have two jobs, and finding a life work balance is hard. Yes, I call it a life work balance - because life should come first. I have a full time job where I spend a lot of time; but its not just the 37.5 hours I have to be at work at, its the client meetings, trying to develop new business and volunteering for work on top of regular work hours that take time. Most days, I come home from my 9-5 and have things for the blog, or have one of other-duties-as-assigned-work thing I have to do. So how do you create a balance?

Have a set schedule and stick to it.

My daily job is fairly structured, so once I started blogging I knew I needed to do the same. Set a time to work on the blog,  respond to e-mails etc. At the beginning I would use all my free time to work on blog things, respond to social media etc. but it was too much. It felt like I was leaving work, to go home and work some more. Now days, I work on posts on Monday and Wednesday evenings, shoot photos on Sundays, and respond to e-mails through the day but don't check my e-mail after 5:30PM.

Set Boundaries.

Since we don't live in a perfect world, most of us will never achieve a perfect separation between work life and personal life. Your goal should be a balance between two, not completely different worlds. Working overtime doesn't always mean you are getting more done - studies show that people who put a lot of overtime are more prone to burnout and making mistakes. You can never expect yourself (or employees) to be on call 24 hours a day - so set limits of when and what work looks like; what does your free time look like etc.

Unplug.

My phone beeps, my e-mail dings and I drop everything to check it. Its one of those awful habits I picked up  early in my career that my life revolves around responding to e-mails/text/calls/social media as soon as it happens. In sales roles, your business (and income) sometimes depend on being timely, but everything might appear urgent, not everything is important. Pick you battles. Put your phone on silent (or shut it off, I know the horror!), close your laptop for an hour here and there. All those things will be there once you are back.

Take "me" time.

Do something just for you at least once a week. Take time do nothing, read a book, got for a walk, hot yoga - whatever makes you happy. Work is important, but you enter life should not revolve around it. Blogging is my creative outlet and one of my favorite things to do, but its a passion of mine that sometimes is a lot like work. Find something that you can do that has nothing to do with your work, even if your job is your passion. Its nice not to have to work, at least once in a while.

People who manage to have a strong life work balance are usually more productive, happier and make better employees.