Let's chat a little bit today about work-life balance. I know we all hear the term a lot, but I also know a lot of you out there already have incredibly busy lives between your careers and families. So finding balance can feel somewhat impossible with an already really demanding schedule.
So what do we do next?
Today I wanted to share some of my top tips for finding work-life balance and share real tips that you can get started on today.
So first and foremost, I think it's really important to stay realistic. While you can put together some strategies and start to implement them in your everyday life- life is unpredictable. Things are going to come up and you're not always going to stay on a specific schedule that you created for yourself, but that's okay. It's still progress and it's still going to have an overall amazing impact on your life if you can start to make small changes.
So my number one tip? It comes down to scheduling. Just like an important meeting that would go on your calendar and you wouldn't miss it and you work around it, that's the same type of thing that we're going to do to work in the things that are important to you, not only career-wise, but in your home life. So if that's certain dinners, weeknight dinners, weekend plans, date nights, certain activities that you know are incredibly important to you, they have to go into the calendar and more importantly, you have to treat it just as you would treat an important meeting that you're having that week.
Now, as a busy mom, I would say the second most important tip, that's had such an incredible impact on my life, is meal prep and planning dinners, especially for the week ahead. In my house, it always came down to figuring out what to eat. It was really stressful. It was last minute takeout ordering, and then that leads to not feeling healthy. And it's expensive! It created a lot of chaos and stress in times that I wanted to be enjoying family time, relaxing, that sort of thing. So taking a couple of hours to plan out the week, whether that's grocery shopping lists, a meal prep service, food delivery service, etc. I always plan out which dinners we're going to eat at home and what ingredients we need for that. We use Instacart so we don't have to battle the grocery store with little kids, and it's really made a huge difference in how much time I feel like I have back during the week.
And my third tip is delegating. I feel like anyone that works with me hears me say this a lot. This did not come easily to me, so I totally understand if you're feeling the same way. But delegating is huge, and it can take form in a variety of different ways. It could be at work delegating certain projects that don't necessarily need to have your personal touch on it as well as at home. If you have family members at home that can start to pick up some of the slack where you are overloaded, wonderful.
Where I've utilized this even in the past couple of weeks is utilizing a laundry service. We were getting out of control with the amount of laundry that we had, and I knew it wasn't sustainable and I needed to outsource it in some way. So I found a local laundry service that's able to help us for a little bit. It won't be forever. Hopefully, we're able to get control of it, but knowing when things are getting a little bit out of whack and then making sure that you delegate in a way that makes sense for you and your family will have a huge impact.
I would also say in general, be really mindful of your work hours and home hours. I'm someone that works from home, so it can be really easy to get caught up in jumping back on your phone or your computer and just continuing to work through the evening. It's incredibly important to have that time to rest. I know for me, when I take a little bit of time away, more ideas are generated. I feel better, more restored going into the next day.
So be mindful and let people know that there are certain times that they're not going to expect a response and that you'll be getting back to them the next day. It sounds simple, but unless you make those hard and fast rules around the boundaries of your working time, it's really easy for it to bleed into some of your home and family time.
Like I said, to start, there's no perfect solution and you're not going to implement these strategies and then hold them to it until the end of time. It's life. Life is unpredictable. Things are going to come up. That's totally fine. But in general, if you implement some of these strategies, you are going to notice a positive change in your overall balance.
I'm so excited to hear if you found this helpful. If you did, please like it, share it, and, I'll talk to you soon.
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