There Is No Perfect Formula for Work-Life Balance
There Is No Perfect Formula for Work-Life Balance
Some individuals who are desperate for some balance in their lives are always seeking that perfect formula where they’re meeting the needs of their personal and professional lives in just the right amount.
The truth is, there’s not a magic formula that can deliver the optimal schedule for you. In fact, it’s often better if you aren’t working by the clock and instead checking in to see if everything is running properly as you go.
As we all know, life can throw a curveball at you at any moment. One day, everything at home is going smoothly, and the next three kids have strep throat, the dog got out of the backyard, and you have a car repair problem.
Other days, it’s either work is effortless and everything seems to be going great, followed by a day of you putting out fires where your website has crashed, you’re having difficulty with a payment processor, and a customer or client is on your case about something.
If you were on a strict work schedule, it might cause an unnecessary burden if you adhered to it rather than causally adjusted your attention to where it was needed the most at that time.
It’s part of the perk of being your own boss when you have the flexibility to take off of work when you need to, or work more when you need to do that, too. But you might run into problems using this strategy if you’re not careful.
Some people fly by the seat of their pants with their schedule to such a degree that every day seems frantic. They don’t know whether their personal or professional life is overstepping its boundaries because there’s chaos on most days in some form.
If you’re always putting out fires, it might be time to change some things. You may need to delegate or outsource certain work tasks or ask for help from your spouse. You might need to tighten up your schedule a bit so that your attention isn’t always drawn from somewhere else.
While there’s no one size fits all approach to managing your work-life balance, you should be able to take a step back and analyze whether or not one area of your life is struggling to compete with the other.
If you notice this, find out why it’s happening. If you’re constantly working overtime for ghostwriting clients, for example, then maybe you’re taking on too many projects. You can up your rates slightly and cut out one project or client to make up for it and reclaim the balance between these areas of your life that you need.