You know you need to be better at work life management, but you’re unsure as to how you should proceed.
You know that being overly rigid only gets you so far, while being overly flexible creates its own host of problems. What’s an entrepreneur to do?
As a productivity coach, I believe the best way to streamline work life balance is to manage your time and energy for the long term.
A simple way to do this is to view yourself and how you relate to your work from a bird’s eye view.
When you do so, you’ll discover some intriguing aspects of how you negotiate your professional and personal time.
You can then use this information to your benefit over the coming weeks and months.
The next time you’re yearning for more work-life balance, evaluate your schedule using any one of these five thoughtful approaches.
Work Life Management: 5 Simple Ways to Succeed
Cultivate space for creativity
Creativity is often the result of rest and relaxation.
A culmination of different viewpoints, experiences, and situations can sometimes reveal the most interesting thoughts and ideas.
Do you have ample time to be creative in your life? Is there space for you to daydream?
Do you regularly engage in an activity outside your normal routine?
Having the space for creativity can help you view challenges, solve problems, and adapt to changing circumstances in a new light.
How to incorporate creativity into your life: Schedule time in your calendar for unstructured thought and exploration.
Take notes by hand, brainstorm ideas through drawing or doodling, or solve a problem through the lens of music or art.
Craft a calendar with comfort
Comfort may bring to mind an overstuffed sofa or a delicious home-cooked meal.
But it can also mean being comfortable in one’s daily routine without undue stress.
Where in your calendar are you comfortable?
Do you have breathing room to hold a meeting or review a report? Are you relaxed when you shop for groceries or spend time with loved ones?
Comfort need not be avoided at the expense of productivity. The key is making comfort part of your productive habits.
How to incorporate comfort into your life: Add space between different segments of your day. Include buffer times between meetings and appointments.
Decompress after work by listening to music or a podcast, exercising, meditating, or walking.
Strive for sustainability
Can you continue your current working pace at the office for the foreseeable future?
If you want to be productive over the long term, you’ll want to do your best to work at a sustainable pace.
What are your current work hours? When and for how long do you take regular breaks? With whom do you work?
Where do you work? If you could create a sustainable schedule for yourself, what would it look like?
Sustainability should include regular pockets of stability for maximum benefit.
How to incorporate sustainability in your life: Review times in your professional or personal life when you felt overworked, stressed, or exhausted.
Find ways to minimize potential future challenges. Delegate tasks to others, create a volunteer time budget, set a regular bedtime, and enforce work-hour boundaries.
Revel in regular reflection
Thankfully, not everything happens at the same time.
You can use this fact of life to your advantage by taking a step back and reflecting upon all the different options available to you at any given moment.
What does your current reflection time look like? Do you have minutes, hours, or days at your disposal?
Are there breaks in your workflow to review recently completed projects? Does your time include moments of solitude?
Reflection time can provide great strength, provided there’s ample space to explore different possibilities.
How to incorporate reflection into your life: Set regular reflection time for yourself. Give yourself time to reflect upon meetings with individuals and groups.
Set aside time to plan, evaluate, and process ideas and information you’ve drafted or developed. Assign deadlines for making important personal for professional decisions.
Gather skills for growth
Growth is a key component of professional and personal development.
Unfortunately, growth doesn’t magically happen on its own. It requires thoughtful attention and guidance.
Do you have sufficient space to grow your relationship with colleagues, employees, vendors, clients, and customers?
Are you lacking in skills that would benefit both yourself and your business? Do you have space in your day to warm up to the day’s activities?
Growth can include both breadth and depth in your work.
How to incorporate growth in your life: Practice viewing aspects of your business and life as being dynamic, not static. Create client and customer lifecycle procedures.
Hone a weak or undeveloped skill you’ve been actively avoiding. Assign boundaries to your daily routines to give your mind and body space to grow and thrive.
These approaches are just a starting point for honing your work-life balance skills.
When you continually strive towards balance, you’ll find yourself more in balance than not.
Learn About Work Life Management
Work-life balance is an important skillset for any business owner. Knowing how to manage your time both in your business and when you’re off the clock can make a world of difference for your overall wellbeing in the long term.
If you want clarity around managing your professional and personal time, book a free 30-minute video strategy session with me today.
A version of this post originally appeared on Inc.com.
In case we haven’t yet met virtually, it’s nice to meet you! Hi, I’m Rashelle Isip, The Order Expert®, productivity coach for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and professionals.
If you liked this article, here are a few ways you can stay in touch:
Sign up for my newsletter. Every Tuesday I send out my latest blog post with practical tips.
Learn more about my resources. I’ve written eBooks and created online courses to help you be productive, manage your time, and stay organized.
Read my blog. There you’ll find tons of practical articles with tips, tricks, how-tos, and a spot of inspiration, too.
Check out my services. If you want help when it comes to being productive in your business, work, and life, take a look at my services.
Follow me on LinkedIn. I post actionable tips on productivity, time management, and work-life balance.
Book a Strategy Session. Want clarity around being more productive in your business or life? Schedule a free 30-minute video strategy session with me today.
0 Comments