4 tips for achieving a great work-life balance

4 tips for achieving a great work-life balance

A few months ago I found myself almost a decade into my career in the retail industry.  As my Wife and I started having children the nights, weekends, and holidays away from home were starting to add more stress to our lives.  Hobbies that I had been accustomed to disappeared and my Wife never had a free moment to herself as she worked a traditional schedule.  Finally I made the decision to pursue the dream of starting my own consulting company.  My goal was to make a difference in the world by utilizing my talents while striking a better work-life balance at home. 

The transition has been a great experience for me developmentally and the time I am getting back with my family is invaluable.  I have developed four strategies that enable me to maximize my work-life balance and still tend to a growing business:

1.)    Incorporate learning into “Me Time.”  A few of my hobbies include working out, running, and yard work.  Since there is an endless amount of learning that needs to occur when creating a business, I take advantage of “Me Time” by substituting podcasts and audio books for music.  I always queue up something relevant to a current or future project of mine.  To retain this material I created a simple spreadsheet to record a podcast topic and 3 simple “take-aways” that I will apply to my business.  This allows me to get to the gym, meet my fitness goals, and maintain a nice yard all while staying productive.

2.)    Leverage the times of day when I am most productive.  I am the most productive for 3 hour stretches at a time so when I am not meeting with a client or at an event I schedule a three hour work session in the morning and one in the afternoon with a break for lunch.  My most creative time is at night so I do a lot of my writing and social media posting after my kids have gone to bed.

3.)    Keep a digital calendar and schedule all work and personal events there.  I hold myself accountable to putting my workout time, golf rounds, and activities with the family on my calendar and do my best not to deviate.  I use color coding to keep personal, work, and travel-related activities separate.

4.)    Know when to throw in the towel.  When my kids are home sick or when they want my attention I simply disconnect from work.  This is amazingly frustrating especially when you are trying to grow your business.  It took me about a month to realize if I try to work on something while being constantly interrupted the product ends up being garbage and my family ends up being neglected.  By disconnecting I get quality time with my family and eliminate the stress of being interrupted.

“Aaron Rehberg is the founder of Rehberg Careers, a career coaching business dedicated to strengthening the professional brand of individuals and small businesses.  Rehberg Careers specializes in professional resume and cover letter makeovers, LinkedIn makeovers, and small business branding.  Learn more about Aaron at www.rehbergcareers.com.  Prior to launching his start-up Aaron spent 9 years in the fortune 100 in numerous leadership roles.”