Wondering how to maintain a work-life balance? If you have or are thinking about starting an online business, you may find yourself wondering about the best way to create a work-life balance when working from home.
How do you break up or schedule your day? Running an online business can be arduous, and creating a work-life balance takes planning. This is something most online business owners struggle with, and it takes a while to figure out. So, how do you maintain a work-life balance while parenting and working from home?
Finding work-life balance when working at home involves planning and boundaries. You must establish a schedule for yourself and separate your personal life from your professional one.
Communicate your boundaries and expectations of others. Make your mental health a priority so you don’t get burned out; prioritize your personal and family time. If you put effort into establishing balance, you will eventually get it.
Research shows that between 45 and 84% of those working from home feel burned out. This is because they haven’t developed a work-life balance. You can put plenty of strategies into practice if you are struggling to separate your work and personal life while working from home. Let’s discuss some of these strategies.
Why Work-Life Balance is Important
Research shows that job stress contributes to poor health outcomes. Reducing job stress is critical to maintaining both your physical and mental health.
People with a good work-life balance are happier and less stressed, helping them to be more motivated and productive when they are working. You will also be more relaxed and engaged in your downtime. Finding a work-life balance is a win-win!
Practical Tips to Improve Your Work-Life Balance While Running An Online Business
1. Stop Multi-Tasking All the Time
When you multi-task throughout your day, you reduce productivity. This works two ways. If you’re distracted when you’re supposed to be working, your work productivity and business suffers.
If you’re distracted by work outside working hours, your family and home don’t get your full attention. Address distractions by doing chores during breaks and your downtime, rather than letting them build up. As an online business owner, you are also entitled to take a break every now and then just to clear your mind.
2. Set Boundaries and Stick to Them Consistently
Setting boundaries helps to structure your time when willpower doesn’t cut it. We all get tired and procrastinate. Set a specific time each day to stop working and make it non-negotiable. Yes, you run an online business, but you also need to know when to switch work off. Turn off message and email notifications, shut down your computer.
What you do and when you do it will look slightly different for everyone. The point is to decide when you are ‘off work’ every day and make it happen. Don’t default to being available 24/7.
3. Short- and Long-Term Goal Setting
Take into account any upcoming deadlines, and set some specific, attainable goals for your online business. Make your goals realistic and make a plan for how you are going to achieve them. Use the SMART principle: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Set both short- and long-term goals.
4. Give Yourself a ‘Happy Hour’
Be as disciplined about your personal life as you are about running your online business. It will help you maintain your mental well-being.
Giving yourself a happy hour means to make time daily for the things that bring you joy. This could be catching up with friends, spending time with your kids, reading a book, or taking a hot bath.
Whatever it is for you, commit to doing it for one hour each day the same way you would schedule an important meeting.
5. Set Boundaries With the People Living in Your House
Working on your online business can be rough if you don’t set expectations with your family. Tell them what being ‘at work’ looks like and what you expect from them while you’re working. If you need to be interruptible for a specific reason, like your kids being home, set a clear definition of what constitutes a necessary interruption.
6. Assess Productivity By Results, Not Hours
Research shows that most people are only productive for 3-4 hours of their workday. Track your work output and determine the length of your workday accordingly. When your work for the day is done, be done.
7. Stop Being a Perfectionist
Even if you put all of these suggestions into practice and follow them religiously, sometimes you will still struggle to find a work-life balance. Life happens, and if you’re working from home, it happens right on top of your workday. Be realistic about your expectations, and don’t expect everything to run smoothly all the time.
8. Mindfulness
Mindfulness and meditation are great ways to reduce stress and help you be more productive while running your online business. There are a multitude of apps, like Calm, Headspace, or Insight Timer, that you can download to help you get started.
9. Accept Your Limitations
We all make mistakes, and adjusting to a new work-at-home routine takes time. Accept that it will take a while to adapt, and don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ll figure out what works for you and your online business.
Recommendations – Our Top Choices
When running an online business, you need to be able to switch off and reset your mind. Meditation is a great way to hit that reset button. Here are some of our top choices to help you with your meditation.
Headspace
Headspace is a mindfulness app with an intuitive interface that provides you with hundreds of guided mediation stories and music. Listen to this app while taking a break or going to bed. It will re-energize your mind so you can focus on your online business.
Calm
If you’re looking for a meditation app built especially for business owners and employees, then you should try the Calm app. It improves well-being by promoting better sleep, reducing stress and anxiety, and developing more mindfulness.
This app is probably our preferred choice because they even provide quantitative data and studies they have done where 84% of people saw improvements in mental health after using this app.
Insight Timer
Insight Timer has helped millions (6 million users to be exact) by providing guided meditation and music. As an online business owner, listening to the sound of bell chimes or wood blocks will transport your mind to another place and help you to refocus.
Conclusion
There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to creating balance. Each of us has a unique style and set of circumstances. Separating work and life is generally the gold standard when it comes to creating balance.
Still, if you’re a parent, you might find a blend works better than separation, especially if you’re scheduling around kids’ schedules. The answer to avoiding burnout and stress is to find whatever works for your situation.
Running an online business has a lot of great benefits. Remember why you’re doing it and take advantage of the freedom it offers.
Make attaining work-life balance a priority and set goals to work towards achieving it. Whether you’re new to at-home work or have been doing it for years, these tips should help you create the balanced life you desire.
