As 2012 draws to a close, many home – based business owners are busy planning ahead for 2013. One of the items that is likely to be at the top of many home – based business owners’ lists of priorities for the coming year is improving their work – life balance. Time and time again, work – life balance proves to be elusive for many of us as we try to walk the line between succeeding in business and living a fulfilling life.
Since each person’s ideal work – life balance is slightly different; it is difficult to propose a one size fits all formula for achieving work – life balance. This does not mean, however, that any of us should give up on trying to find it. It is important that we take the individual nature of work – life balance to heart as we set about trying different solutions for finding it.
One useful exercise in figuring out how to achieve a better balance between your business and the bigger picture of your life as a whole is to list your top three priorities in those two areas and then think about two things. The two things to think about are whether the activities that you do throughout the course of your days are in line with those priorities and whether those six items that you have identified are items that seem to work with each other or against each other.
Thinking about priorities is, on its own, not going to get you very far. Unless you examine how those priorities relate to one another, you may not be able to see the often subtle ways in which you could be working against yourself, or making things harder than they have to be. For example, if one of your work priorities is to put in a specific amount of hours each week and one of your life priorities is to be active in your community, you may feel like you are constantly fighting to find time for anything or anyone, including your family and yourself. Likewise, you might find that the activities that fill up much of your time do not relate to any of your top work or life priorities. If you find any of these things happening, it may mean that a change of priorities, a change of activities, or both, is in order.
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