Work-life Balance For Successful Entrepreneurs
For a successful entrepreneur, maintaining a balance between work and personal life is extremely crucial. The art for doing this should be implied carefully.
Let us first shed light on the reasons because of which maintaining balance between work and life is needed so much. Many entrepreneurs say that contrary to common sense, instead of getting decreased, their overall work rate increases, when they spend lesser time on work. Also, it helps them from draining out of all energy. They believe that they fall short of innovative ideas when they work more and it eventually leads to them being unable to meet the expectations of their customers and clients. It all leads to dropping of their market values.
REASON WHY MOST ENTREPRENEURS DOES NOT BECOME SUCCESSFUL
Entrepreneurs who failed after setting up their first start-ups, all give a mutual answer when asked the cause of their failure, that is, they had worked more than they should have had. They used to spend all the nights working and then taking sleep for very little time (4 to 5 hours) in the morning. Out of 168 hours, 100 were spent in working per week. Their minds had given up to come up with productive plans for expanding their businesses. Even if they would come up with one, their tired and exhausted bodies would not cooperate in its implementation. How can entrepreneurs lead a team properly when the leader is sleepy all the time? On interviewing some high achievers in various fields like sports, academics and entrepreneurship, the secret that got unveiled for their success was their strategy in making a balance between personal and work life. They said they never compromised their sleep for anything and lined up all their priorities after it. They were well aware of the fact that being able to produce improved quality work in a shorter period of time, their minds had to run faster than the bullets, and for which their bodies needed sufficient sleep that too night sleep.
Another advice came from Nikita Loomis, Academic writer at CourseworkClub that:
“Balancing the scales of work and life is important because it helps a person to be sorted in his life. He does not have to remain in a constant dilemma as to which is more important to him, work or family. He knows his family and friends come before every other thing and they are in the top most position in his list of priorities in life. He knows very well that he can re-establish his business if it fails in his first attempt, but, his family members and the memories cannot be recreated once they are gone.”
Having enough said, let us now proceed by giving you some very helpful tips to balance your work-life.
SCHEDULE EVERYTHING
Most of us make schedules for our respective corporate affairs and business meetings and some of us even follows it successfully. How about making a proper time table for your family bonds too? Not a bad idea! Successful entrepreneurs usually recommend to specially taking out time from your busy routine for your friends and family. You sideline them, and life will sideline you.
Psychological studies prove that spending quality time with your closed ones opens up your mind and makes space for creative ideas. If you want to be hard on yourself anywhere, be hard and strict in fixing certain time for your family only, and in that time doing just nothing but be with them, no matter how important work you have.
PASTIME
To become a successful entrepreneur, one has to literally put his heart, soul, sweat and life into his business. This can be really exhausting if one is not cautious enough. As already directed, one has to allot some time for himself only. Enjoying one’s own company is very beneficial for mental health. For this, the person can develop a new pastime which interests him or else, continue with the activities he has always done in his spare time. This helps in giving them a boost up and energy and motivation to continue with their work with zeal and zest. All the stress piled up from work load gets relieved this way and the person gets filled with positivity looking forward to face upcoming challenges with courage and strategies.
SET LIMITATIONS
Never take any of the two for granted, neither family nor business. If they both mean the world to you then you really have to be very smart in dealing with them both. Set your priorities straight. When you are with your family and you get a call from office, you know which calls if left unattended will cause no harm. Strictly warn your colleagues not to disturb if the problem is not very serious or can be discussed the other day. Similarly, guide your family sternly that as long as there is no serious emergency, do not call you when you are at work. Explain them how much time it saves and how it helps you stay concentrated and dedicated to what you are doing.
POWER OFF THE CELL PHONES
To be honest, this is the bonus tip. No cell phones equals to no tensions. As an entrepreneur, you must already be having two sim cards; one for your co-workers only, and the other one for family members, friends and other acquaintances. It is your job to power off the sim or mobile phone used for contacting family when you are at work. Give them an alternate number of a colleague in case of an extreme emergency. Do vice versa when you are at home. Get yourself busy in making beautiful memories with family instead of bringing work to home through calls. You will never regret missing a business deal as much as you will regret missing the sight of your child taking his first steps or your wife giving birth to your child and all those special moments.
APPOINT RIGHT EMPLOYEES
Do yourself a favour by hiring the correct people. Correct here means people who are willing to work and make your business flourish as much as you do. If, out of courtesy, you have hired your friend just because he was jobless, and he fails to understand how your business is run, this will cost you your personal life. You will have to put in extra effort and do the part of work of your friend, as well. You are under no pressure to continue working with such workers. In fact, you have all the rights to fire them. Hire employees who take their jobs seriously. Thus, you will be able to take some days off to go on vacations with your family, as your mind will be at peace with regard to your work as your employees will be well trained and responsible. Also, this will help you put your efforts in other, more important tasks related to expanding your business as most of all the routine office work will be handled by your employees and not by you. Less supervision will be required as you will have built a trust relationship with them and so they don’t need to be instructed for every small task.
TIME YOURSELF STRICTLY
Be very strict to yourself when it comes to time. Reach the workplace on time and leave on time. If you have decided 5 in the evening to be your leaving time, then it should be so. The closer you get to the leaving time, the more your working efficiency will increase. Set a certain amount of time to finish a certain task and challenge yourself to finish it earlier. This way your time at office will be saved and you will have more time to spend with your family. You must have deduced after having worked for some time that after how many hours of continuously working your mind stops working and you begin to burn out? You need to pay special care here. If you can work productively for four hours only then do not get hard on yourself by forcefully pulling yourself into working longer. The amount of work you have done in four hours is equal to the work others do in nine. So how does it make a difference at all?
COMPROMISE ON PERFECTIONISM
We realize what perfectionism means to you. Perhaps, everything. The idea of perfectionism was great when you were young. Now that you have grown up there are many people whose lives are connected to yours. You are now living for them. So many successful entrepreneurs claim to have given up the habit of perfectionism just to make sure their personal life does not get affected. Give in your best to whatever you do, but don’t burn yourself out in the process. Not only perfectionists climb up the ladder of success. Smart minds do too. Do not be a jack of all masters of none. Think twice. Is the project you are working even worth spending extra time on which is supposed to be your family-time. Something that might seem just ordinary to you might be beyond perfect for your client as perfectionism is just a matter of perception.