Is Balance in Business and Life Achievable?

It’s a stark reality how many CEOs of any size company are divorced or don’t have significant relationships in their life. This is because they get so consumed in the business and their role as a CEO that their other relationships suffer. So how do you balance running your business, being engaged with your family, and have other things as a priority in life and not lose yourself? By making tradeoffs.

I like to call them surges. Instead of trying to balance work and life, I rotate my priorities so I can surge in one area at a time. Here are the four guidelines I follow to juggle my business and personal priorities:

1. Have a flexible plan with short- and long-term goals.

If both having a life and running a business are priorities, then choices must be made. When you’re setting a goal, create a time-block and stick to it. The trick is to come up with a realistic block of time to accomplish your goal. Creating an artificial timeline to leverage pressure will immediately accelerate your schedule and pacing.

Be flexible in setting goals. Shifting to a mindset where moving a little slower than you planned or shuffling the schedule around to accommodate other priorities can relieve feelings of pressure and guilt.

2. Rotate the trades you’re making.

In the past, I would work until I was completely burned out. My career was very successful because I traded everything else off, and my relationships suffered because of it.

Now, I try to surge in one area by creating a time-block and focusing on that priority. I might stay up until 2 a.m. working on a blog post, and then I will take a break from it for a day or two so I can sleep a bit and focus on family priorities.

When it comes to scheduling travel for work I don’t schedule my trips too close together because I know I want to be home, and I need to be present for the other priorities in my life. By time-blocking my travel, I can fully commit to a conference and focus on work for those five days.

Also Related: Day 24 – Ask for Help: 31 Day FLY Mom Challenge

3. Ask for help. Get help.

While I’m surging one area, I’m getting help from my support system in another. This is the time to delegate and let go of responsibilities. If an activity doesn’t fit within a priority, it helps to evaluate whether it’s important. If it’s not important, you may want to drop it from the rotation.

During this process, ask yourself, “Is it important that I do that task? Or is it important that the task be completed?” Don’t be afraid to ask for help completing a task, and be creative about whom to turn to. Some options include hiring a professional or utilizing a service, like a grocery delivery service, to help get everything done.

4. Take care of yourself.

It’s easy to put yourself last. There are a lot of things in life that require your attention, and you can just give and give until you don’t have anything left. It’s important to feed your emotions and keep your spirit high by:

• Taking time to eat well and refuel consistently
• Exercising however you feel is healthy for you
• Taking time out with friends and being social
• Making sure you laugh. Scheduling time to watch something funny on the internet every day.
• Feeding your brain by scheduling time blocks to educate and grow yourself.

Also Related: Motherhood & Balance Don’t Mix. Here’s why.

I’ve gotten better at seeing and considering the impact of the things in my rotation, and I only make decisions based on that impact. Balance isn’t realistic in a business because owners can’t stop and focus on one thing without destroying the balance. The trick is to rotate through and do a good enough job on each thing that you can keep it all functioning and not lose yourself.

Copy below and let us know: how do you juggle between business and personal life?

This post was written by Karen Que. Karen Que is a lifelong entrepreneur, business woman, wife, and mother who is on a mission to make her family a priority while enjoying immense business success on her own terms. Karen loves to break the mold by helping small business owners create an explosion of growth without losing their sanity. As the Founder and CEO of Q infusion LLC, she works together with small business owners to build their CEO skills, implement systems that create stability, and infuse big business thinking and strategy into their growth plans. To find out more please visitwww.qinfusion.com or be social @qinfusion  You can connect with Karen on Twitter and Facebook.

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