Running your business from home is a great way to spend more time with family but only if you know how to balance your time between work and personal life. You might be physically present at home, but if you are always focused on your work, are you really spending time with your family? Or are you just there but not really paying attention to what’s going on around you?
If you find yourself spending more time on your business and less on your spouse and kids, here are the best strategies to create a balance between these two important aspects of your life.
Establish regular working hours
Treat your business like a full-time job and set up regular working hours, leaving personal tasks outside of those particular hours. For instance, if your work hours are from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., focus on your work during that “shift” and reserve non-business related matters (household chores, errands, downtime) for before or after your self-designated hours. In this way, you can avoid letting work stuff bleed into your family life, and you can focus on your family’s needs as well as your own after you’re done with work.
Use technology to your advantage
Many tech solutions can make your life easier, such as ServiceNow project management, among many others. Using business technology to your advantage not only streamlines your business processes, but it also helps free up more of your time for more important tasks, whether it is work-related or not.
To find the right types of technology that you need, determine which areas of your business needs tech solutions the most (e.g., accounting, HR, administrative, etc.) and then look for software that best fits your needs, preferences, and budget.
Outsource
One of the best ways to reduce your workload is to outsource some aspects of your business that would otherwise take up too much of your time. For example, if most of your day is being eaten up by managing social media, outsource to a social media manager who can handle your platforms for you. Or if you’re spending too much time on tedious administrative tasks, hire a virtual assistant to take care of the most menial things like replying to e-mails, scheduling tasks, and accepting phone calls.
Stop wasting time on meetings
Spending an unnecessary amount of time on meetings can easily push you into working overtime on your business, which, of course, leaves less time for family matters. That said, try to minimize the time you spend on meetings using these simple tips:
- Set a limit on your meeting time
- Start and finish the meeting on time
- Don’t wait for latecomers before starting
- Set a clear agenda and stick to it
- Do adequate preparation before the meeting
- Hand out material for advanced reading
- Stop holding meetings that could have been an e-mail
- Save non-meeting related talk for after the meeting
Don’t bite off more than you can chew
It’s normal to be ambitious when it comes to business, but there is a fine line between being ambitious and being way ahead of yourself. Don’t take on more workload than you can handle with the resources that you currently have. Doing so can do more harm than good, not only for your business but also for your personal life.
If you want to take on more work for the sake of business growth, ensure that you have enough resources and workforce to handle it without compromising the quality that you deliver. Otherwise, you might spend even more time cooped up in your home office than being with your family.
Hire help
Outsourcing to freelancers is a relatively easy and inexpensive way to get help for your business. Still, there will come a point that you need to hire a part-time or full-time employee to work for your business, especially when you start to grow exponentially.
Hiring an employee for your business is also one of the best ways to free up more of your time. With someone taking some of the burden off your shoulders, you can spend less time on your business and more time for your family. More than that, having an employee to help you out will also make your business more efficient, which can easily lead to growth over time.
Running a business from home is a full-time job, not a 24-hour job. With these tips, you can maintain a healthy balance between your work life and personal life, making sure that you spend more time with your family than your business, but without compromising the latter.
In what other ways can home-based business owners free up more time for their personal lives? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
