Let’s talk about some little tricks for maintaining work-life balance if you’re an entrepreneur and/or work from home.
If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, you may have realised that working in this way presents some challenges when it comes to work-life balance, especially if you’re used to commuting to the office and being in one environment for work and another one for play.
Our friend from albertopepe.com runs an SEO company and does consulting in Madrid. As a self-employed entrepreneur, he works mostly from home, meaning the lines between family life, social life, work life and home life can blur, disrupting the balance he aims to maintain between them.
Though he loves what he does and finds himself reading up on his industry during play time, he also finds it unproductive and invasive when his work life seeps into everything else he does.
One of his secrets is to have little rituals at the end of the day that make it easy to clearly define when work ends and when the rest of his life begins. For example, he often goes out running once he has finished. This clears his head, gets him up and moving, and puts him in touch with his body and raw physical energy.
Another is that he clears his desk, putting his laptop, diary and stationary away, and gets up and away from where he works. This physical separation from work helps him mentally separate from it too.
There are many of these little rituals you can do. Find the ones that help you delineate the end of your working day and start the remainder afresh.
Though it presents challenges, we also recognise that working from home has a series of benefits when it comes to work-life balance.
For one thing, there’s no commuting involved. Depending on the length of your usual commute, you might save 2 or even 3 hours every single day by working at home. In a week of 5 working days, that’s 10 to 15 hours every week, around 25 to 35% of your weekly working hours!
Our friend is very grateful that he doesn’t have to commute. In fact, it’s one of the reasons he became self-employed in the first place. He also tells us that he’s more independent and is much more certain about where to dedicate his time than he used to be, now that he’s free from relying on a boss to guide him. Who knew?
Avoiding the commute is a big win. Instead of sitting on crowded trains on in traffic jams, you can dedicate all those hours to the rest of your life: to health, family, socialising, cooking, recreation, hobbies.
Another thing is that, if you’re highly disciplined and organised, your working hours will be far more productive than in an office environment, meaning you might have to work less than in an office situation. You might even be able to cut your hours down a little bit if your boss acknowledges your increased productivity.
Much of this has to do with your character and your ability to organise yourself. If you do it well, you’ll likely find that the benefits outweigh the potential downsides.