Posts tagged Successful Business performance

Work - Life Balance

Running your own business is a tough job. If you are in a conventional earning job then you can plan in order to maintain a balance between work and your personal life. But things become different when you own a business because running a business demands the extra efforts and can leave you spending many more hours working than if in a conventional job.

When working for yourself you need to be there whenever you see an opportunity and you must always be ready to face new challenges, this fact alone makes it hard to plan anything with certainity so it becomes tough to get time for yourself, let alone your family.

As a person you must appreciate the fact that you should not work for hours on end like a machine. You do need some time to relax and rejuvenate yourself. If you work continuously in a stressed environment you may get burnt out.

It is a known fact that productivity levels fall when you do not refresh your energy levels from time to time. ‘Workaholics’ advocate that the output they can generate, given a set of inputs, is directly proportional to the number of hours they put in. This may be true to some extent but maybe they should also think about the fact that the productivity unleashed during those hours are what matters in the final outcome, and not just number of hours spent.

As a businessman/ woman, you should try to focus on the output generated per hour rather than the hours put in. This way you will be able to evaluate your operational efficiency and work towards improving them. It is important to keep a time for yourself during busy schedules to rejuvenate yourself, by doing so you help yourself towards better work-life balance. There are some steps you can take to maintain work-leisure balance while on the job.

Firstly, check out the time when your customers require you the most and plan your work schedule in such a way that you are available at that time without any sort of breaks unless it goes over lunch etc (bathroom breaks not included of course ). For the rest of the time you can plan out appropriate breaks during the remainder of your working hours.

You can take time out to walk out of your office or attend a networking event and interact with different people (it is work but of the lighter version , try not to go in with a sell mentality), that way you have time out and at the same time expand your network, you may even get a prospect or customers through your network.

There are a lot of social networks which are available like Lion’s club, rotary club, Chambers of commerce etc. where you can meet like-minded business persons which may be useful to your business. Alternatively listen to some music for ten minutes, go for a walk, join a gym and work out during the slow hour periods, if you decideto do this you will free yourself from hectic hours and also build up healthy physique.

To get more family time plan to do things in quiet times, if you think you cannot find quiet time ask yourself this ‘can i get up a little earlier or do something else like read and respond to email a little later in order to make time during sensible hours to play with your children or take them/ pick them up from school? With a little thought you will find that you can – the key is knowing when your busy periods are so you can utilise your quiet times.

Adopting a better life-style is as important as generating better profits for your business. No matter how much you have to work, you must make space for leisure time. As we have seen above, even eisure activities can be aligned to your business motives like expanding networks, if planned in a proper way, running a business can be fun.

Always remember that you should not ruin your health to earn money and then spend the same to regain your health. You must always strive towards a healthy work-life balance.