Need Help Striking Work-Life Balance?

Believe it or not, it is critical to your health, your quality of life, and the impact you have on those around you to maintain a balanced life with job, family and other interests. Here are some practical tips for maintaining that balance.

1. Evaluate the benefits of a part-time or flex-time schedule. Specifically, a flex-time schedule may be appropriate in a career that is results-driven.
2. Consider working from home. This option has some obvious benefits, but it also presents some challenges that should be evaluated before committing to this decision.
3. Determine and set your work schedule and stick to it. Protect your personal and family time. While it may seem counterintuitive to limit your availability to clients, you will actually be more productive and effective by sticking to a predetermined schedule.
4. Limit or eliminate evening or Saturday appointments. This is consistent with number 3 and in addition to allowing you to maintain your sanity, will result in increased efficiency and effectiveness.
5. Make it a priority to schedule work and other office appointments around your family's events (including birthdays, anniversaries and school schedules). While building and maintaining a successful business requires dedication and sacrifice, if your job becomes more important than those close to you, your priorities should be reevaluated.
6. Remember to identify non-work time (in many cases this means the weekend) for family, friends and personal exploits and abstain from working during that time. Unless you are an on-call ER doctor, you can probably turn off the work cell phone.
7. Give lunch its due. While breakfast is the most important meal of the day, lunch provides a chance to allow your mind to process the first half of the day and reset for the afternoon. Until naps become a part of the accepted American workday, lunch is the next best thing.
8. If you are having difficulty committing to number 7, consider setting lunch appointments with friends. This way you are forced to take a break from work and, assuming you like your friends, you get the added benefit of social interaction with them.
9. As I believe in the importance of the mid-day meal, in addition to recognizing the benefit of being as productive as possible, I suggest also setting lunch meetings with colleagues to brain-storm and share ideas.
10. Organization of your day will also result in increased productivity and the peace of mind that follows routine. Consider taking the last 15 minutes of each day and identifying the tasks for the next day.
11. Train staff to handle calls, drop-ins and matters not requiring your immediate attention. Then delegate, delegate, delegate. Your effectiveness and efficiency should skyrocket as you take advantage of the excellent on-the-job training you have given your staff (you are providing training right?).
12. If you are not already on the right side of the digital divide, it is time to cross-over and start communicating through e-mail to increase convenience for providing responses. The time wasted trading voice mails should be better utilized.
13. Volunteer. Giving your time and talents to benefit the less fortunate will provide you with perspective regarding your own fortune, in addition to the joy that comes from helping others. Why are you complaining about your dirty shoes when the man next to you has no feet?