How to maintain a healthy work/life balance as a business owner
The transition from employee to business owner is not always an easy one. There is so much to learn about running a business, and taking care of your personal needs often slips to the bottom of the list. There’s no shortage of tales of business owners facing burnout because they never managed to find their work/life balance.
While growing a business is certainly exciting and worthwhile, it should never be the only thing happening in your life. You need to take care of your health and wellbeing away from your business so that you have the energy and drive to show up every day and do your best work.
Maintaining a good work/life balance is one of the most effective ways to achieve this. If you’re a new business owner struggling to find balance in your life, read on to learn my top tips for finding the work/life balance sweet spot.
What is work/life balance?
Finding work/life balance is a conscious decision to not allow work to dominate your life. It’s easy to get sucked into the excitement of running a business and neglect everything else in your life, including partners, family, friends and even yourself.
But this isn’t a sustainable way to live. If you neglect your health, you might soon find that you’re unable to work because of illness. And if you neglect your relationships, you might find that you have no one left to share your success with.
Why is work/life balance so important?
Humans need a few things to survive, and work isn’t on that list. Neglecting your work/life balance will damage your business in the long term because you won’t be able to keep up the momentum. Eventually, something has to give.
By learning early on that your work/life balance is worth protecting, you can safeguard your mental and physical health and ensure you become a more effective business owner in the process.
Simple ways to maintain work/life balance
Most office workers have set hours they have to be present in the office. Whether this is 9-5, 10-6 or a more flexible arrangement. Maximum working hours are enshrined in law, so you should make sure that you observe these laws for your wellbeing.
Setting and sticking to your working hours is a simple way to make sure you clock off at a decent time every day. When you know you have to power down your laptop by 6 pm, you’re far more likely to get your head down and focus on tasks.
But setting working hours and sticking to them are two completely different things. Who here hasn’t said they would only work Monday to Friday from 9 to 5, and then found themselves working all hours of the day and into the weekend?
The simplest way to make sure you stick to your hours is to make plans outside of these hours. Tell your family you always want to eat dinner together. Or arrange to meet a friend for drinks after work. Planning a weekend away will also help to make sure you get your work finished before 5 pm on a Friday.
Other ways to protect your work/life balance include:
Scheduling your social and personal time as you would your work time. If it’s in the calendar, it’s more likely to happen.
Stop checking your work emails outside of office hours. You can’t get sucked into weekend and evening work if you aren’t triggered by the notification ping.
Make sure you schedule time off throughout the year. Running a business is no excuse not to take a holiday.
Never work on your birthday. It’s a simple boundary and one that every business owner should have.
Create a dedicated workspace. If you’re working from home, there’s the temptation to never really switch off. By creating a dedicated workspace, you can power down, close the door and return to home life with ease.
Make time for yourself. Self-care is not optional as a business owner. You need time to recharge your batteries.
Review your workload regularly. If you think you might be taking on too much, look for ways to delegate or lighten your load. If you’re regularly going over your assigned hours, it might be time to think about working with a VA.
Finding the perfect work/life balance takes work. And it might not always work out perfectly. Sometimes, business demands mean that you will need to finish a project in the evening or over the weekend, but try to make this an exception rather than the norm.
