As a woman entrepreneur, I know the difficulties of work and life pulling at you. It is difficult to balance both. Today, I want to help women entrepreneurs with balancing life and business.
Defining Work-Life Balance
What is work-life balance really? You know I love definitions, so I will share a couple I found that define it well.
work-life balance (Noun) “the amount of time you spend doing your job compared with the amount of time you spend with your family and doing things you enjoy:”
cambridge dictionary
“Forbes “describes work/life balance as “equal time or priority to personal and professional activities.” I found another definition of work/life balance from Coursera as “the amount of time you spend doing your job versus the amount of time you spend with loved ones or pursuing personal interests and hobbies.”
Help For Women Entrepreneurs With Balancing Life And Business
I do not always do this right myself, but I want to share some help or tips for women entrepreneurs with balancing life and business.
- Set Priorities
- Time Management
- Calendar Blocking
- Learn to Say ‘No’
- Learning to Communicate Your Needs
- Mindset
- Your Self-care
Set Priorities
One of the biggest ways to help balance life and business is to set your priorities. It is wise to set up major priorities and then smaller ones.
For instance, my faith and family come first, period. Then I prioritize my business and life with friends and others. I put my faith and family first and then ask the question, “Does this fit into my life right now without getting in the way of my faith and family?”
You can even go so far as to set up micro priorities, meaning writing down a full list of all of the things in your life taking up time and prioritizing each of them.
Time Management For Life And Business
Time management is another key element for balancing life and business. If you do not have good time management skills, you will always feel like you are chasing after the work-life balance dream and never achieve it.
Time management skills can be taught through classes or by a coach. Perhaps even self-taught if you have the persistence, and will enough to stay with it. Usually, it is best to take a class (many are free on this topic).
I find that there are a few tools that help empower me with my time management skills. One of which is a project management software. There are many to choose from, and they can help add order back into your business and life.
I use the tool Wrike when I have multiple business clients or tasks to keep up with during a specific period. During my digital marketing days, I used this tool daily. A couple of other possible tools are Asana, Monday, and Trello. There are many more software tools you can discover by searching on Google if none of these work for you.
Calendar Blocking Helps To Balance Life And Business
Calendar blocking is another way to help you manage life and business. Using your digital calendar, you can block off specific periods. You can also utilize colors to help you differentiate between tasks and appointments.
I also utilize different colors to represent different activities. For instance, I use dark green for family or grandchildren’s activities, and I use deep purple for my Fearless Business Boss appointments (as you can see below). In dark red are important activities that I need to pay special attention to.
At a glance, I can tell what is coming up by the colors.
Learn to Say “No”
I readily admit this used to be difficult for me. As a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser, I used to say ‘yes’ to too many things and tried to please too many people. The irony is that when you begin to say, ‘no,’ people are not less pleased (aside from some family members, perhaps, but then again, you may never say anything to please them).
The other irony of saying ‘no’ more often is that you begin to develop a sense of what is most to you. Think of it not as saying, ‘no’ so much, as it is learning to say ‘yes’ to things that are truly important to you and your values. This is one of the biggest steps to learning to live balanced.
Communicate Your Needs To Others
Learning to communicate your needs to others effectively is the second biggest breakthrough you can have in living a balanced life and business. I used to assume my husband and children knew me and, therefore, should know the things I like.
What I often received on birthdays, Mother’s Day, and Christmas were trickets, ugly sweaters, and blouses that didn’t fit, and big clunky costume jewelry that I only wore around the house for the kids. My husband was always telling me he was not a mind reader, so why did I think he was when it came to what I really wanted on these holidays?
Once I learned to communicate my needs to others better, I began receiving gifts I truly wanted and treasured. Part of this evolution in our family came because of my disability due to Multiple Sclerosis and Lupus. When you lose the ability to perform many of the household tasks that you’ve always done, you feel powerless. During this time, I assumed they all knew how I cleaned up after everyone, vacuumed several times a week, and cleaned through each child’s room every quarter to get rid of clothes and toys that did not fit anymore.
I had to quickly learn how important each detailed description of the task I used to do was now. I learned to be even more detailed than I already was, including instructions on how to do many of the household chores. Although I also had to learn to relax my expectations a bit as well. Learning these lessons made it easier to make lists of what I wanted for those holidays to give to my husband. No, I didn’t get everything on the list, nor did I want everything. I wanted him to be able to choose from those items, and he could also let the children know and help them pick out items when they were younger.
I like surprises, and now I am still surprised because I do not know which items they will get, but at least they know what I want now. Give it a try, and you may be pleasantly surprised at what shows up under your tree next year.
Mindset
Mindset is a big part of learning to live balanced. Having the right mindset keeps you pointed in the right direction. Just as a vehicle allows you to steer it, the road keeps you on the right path to your destination. Consider mindset your road to keep you going in the right direction.
Having the ‘right’ mindset isn’t always easy, but trying to keep a positive attitude and finding good things in the middle of difficulties helps your mind stay focused on the right things.
“You’re not a prisoner of your current mindsets. You’re a work in progress and thus you can continue to cultivate them.”
fearless business boss
Your Self-care
Self-care is another important factor in helping you balance your life and business. If this is out of whack, meaning that you’ve not paid attention to it, you can end up with sorts of issues.
As you’ve more than likely heard, in the example of the plane crash, when the masks drop from the ceiling, they instruct the parents to put them on first. The reason for this is that children will panic and take more time, often never allowing the parent to put their mask on.
This example simply reminds us how important self-care is today. Most think of self-care as getting your hair done or getting to get nails painted. And this could be a type of self-care for you. When I consider self-care, however, I am thinking of my health.
Too often, I let my health fall to the side while I took care of everyone else first, second, and last. I was always too busy with owning a business, homeschooling our children, taking part in the ministry God had given us, and many other things. I never stopped. Until I had no choice because I was on my back looking up. THEN I had to pay attention, but it is still difficult to put my self-care before other work, today.
Final Thoughts
If you are struggling with Life and Work (business) balance, please reach out for your FREE 30-minute sessions (use the button below to easily book a time).
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