Tips for Maintaining a Work Life Balance
11/05/2022
Starting your own small business is a very exciting time in your career, however, it does come with many commitments which may find you struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Whether you’re reading emails during your annual leave, answering calls on a weekend or skipping lunch for that important meeting, these are all habits which could disrupt your balance, leading you to burn out and not perform your best when working.
Having a healthy work-life balance will optimize your capacity when working, and let you enjoy your well-earnt time off with family and friends, so here are our top 5 tips on maintaining that balance when having a small business...
1. Stay Organised
Organisation may be your worst nightmare – but in truth, it is what will free up your time and allow you to plan your workload so you don’t overwhelm yourself and others in your business.
Using planning applications and tools may be beneficial when you have a small business, this would take the strain off yourself and having to manually plan everything and inform others to put it in their diary. Investing in a good and trustworthy planning tool, if you haven’t already, is great for social media posts and emails too.
Staying organized and planning should be very up on your priority list, not only for your employees and clients to be satisfied, but to successfully maintain a work-life balance by scheduling content and keeping everyone in the loop while you’re away from your desk.
2. Switch Off
Our mobile phones can be extremely fun – chatting to friends, watching content and seeing what goes on at any time, anywhere, but knowing when to switch them off is something many of us struggle with.
Switching off your work-related devices such as phones or laptops when you’re on annual leave or during your day off, means you get a complete break from what’s going on in that world. This may seem scary, however, most of the issues that arise out-of-hours, can usually only be rectified the next working day.
What’s the point of stressing yourself out if you can’t do anything about it, right?
3. Set Boundaries
Setting boundaries, whether that may be with employees or clients, is one of the most important factors when thinking about your work-life balance.
Constantly having emails and messages from colleagues pinging through your phone will just be stressful and uncomfortable for you.
However, communicating to your colleagues that you will only be able to answer these during X days and X hours, will take pressure off your shoulders, and let everyone know what your communicative expectations are like.
4. You Deserve a Break!
Once you get into the hang of writing an email, presenting something or setting up continuous meetings, it’s hard to remember that pasta you made for your lunch.
Remembering to have lunch breaks and even 5-10 minute breaks scattered during your working day is crucial to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. These mini-breaks will not only give you time to chill, but refocus your brain and leave you feeling more refreshed than constant screen time.
Going on a walk and spending some time away from your desk is always great when you’re having a stressful day.
5. Reach Out
If things ever get overwhelming and you feel you have too much on your plate, communicate and reach out for help.
There will always be a way of easing some stress off yourself, whether that is splitting the workload of your small business with a colleague, using more efficient planning tools or just ranting about your problems to someone.
If you feel that work-life balance is slipping, re-evaluate what you think may be affecting it and come up with a couple of ideas that will improve your working balance, Mind (the mental health charity) has some great tips on managing stress.
There they are – our 5 tips for maintaining a healthy work-life balance while having a small business. The pressure of having your own business is huge, but remember that you must enjoy life while doing so!
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