Healthy Living Roadmap For Online Entrepreneurs Part V The Work Life Balance

Entrepreneurship is an exciting world to live in. There is nothing like the rush of owning your own business, watching it grow based on the work that you put into it. In fact, that rush can be so intoxicating that some entrepreneurs spend so much time focused on their enterprises that other parts of their lives go off track. This final article in our five part series on paving a healthy living roadmap provides some tips on maintaining your health by keeping your work and personal life in balance.

What is the right balance?
Jim Bird, CEO of WorklifeBalance says that achievement and enjoyment are the front and back of the coin of value in life. You cannot get the full value from life without BOTH Achievement and Enjoyment. A good definition of work life balance is Meaningful daily Achievement and Enjoyment in each of four life quadrants: Work, Family, Friends and Self.

Notice that Jim does not suggest that work life balance is an equal balance. Your best individual work life balance will vary over time, often on a daily basis. The right balance for you today will probably be different for you tomorrow. The right balance for you when you are single will be different when you marry, or if you have children; when you start a new career versus when you are nearing retirement. Jim also suggests that enjoyment does not just mean happiness; it also means pride, satisfaction, celebration, love and a sense of well being.

How do you figure out the right balance for you?
Recognizing that the answer to this question will change as your life circumstances change, it makes sense to figure out how to strike the right balance today, given the challenges of the moment and identify what balance you are striving for over the longer term. For example, you may be launching a business and it simply takes up 75% of your time. You do not want to work this much over time but for right now, it is what you need to do and frankly, the sense of satisfaction you are getting from its initial success is very rewarding. Alternatively, you may have a newborn just now. No matter how much you had like to devote more time to work, the demands of a newborn are so great that you simply need to concentrate your energies on family and you know it is worth it.

Today vs. Sometime
Try this exercise to figure out where you are today and where you want to be in the future.

Draw a circle. Think of that circle as all of the waking hours you have available. Divide the circle into the segments that represent the time you spend on each category of life. (If you do not get enough sleep, reduce your personal time to represent the loss and add time to whatever causes you to lose sleep.)

If you do not like the distribution, draw another circle with the distribution you prefer.

Think about how you can get from where you are now to where you want to be. What changes do you need to make? Make a list and set goals to change your distribution of time.

Achieve Balance Today
We know that you cannot always change your circumstances immediately. The baby will get older and sleep through the night but right now, sleep is an issue. The company will stabilize but it will take six months to get there. In the meantime, you can still figure out how to get some work life balance wherever you are by figuring out how to find both achievement and enjoyment in each sphere of your life, even if that sphere is currently over or underrepresented.

What might that mean especially for you as an online entrepreneur?
If you are working many hours on your business, you might want to step back and recognize that even though it is time consuming, you are really getting a kick out of the new blog you put up and you can see the revenues growing which will take the pressure off household expenses. You might feel better just by knowing that it may be work, but it is also satisfying.

One of the first casualties of work life balance problems is sleep. Many people try to squeeze more hours out of the day by sleeping less. Did you know that the less you sleep, the less productive you are and the more likely you are to become overweight? If you are losing sleep, you can:

Put yourself on a schedule and apply your entrepreneurial discipline to sticking to it.

Take a nap during the day. Recent research says that a 45 minute nap is optimal to recycle your energy.

Stop drinking caffeine by mid afternoon so you do not have any artificial stimulants disturbing your rest.

Make a list of all the things you have to do the next day or week in the evening, several hours before bedtime. If you have captured the tasks and issues on paper, you do not have to toss and turn all night worrying about them.

Use the flexibility of your online work life to your advantage. For example, stop working at 3pm when your kids get out of school. Go back to work for an hour or two after they have gone to bed. Or get up at 5am, go for a run, work for an hour then spend time with your kids. Go back to work later in the morning.

Entrepreneurs are often a bit out of balance and that is okay because they really like what they are doing. But, if you are so far out of balance that you are feeling dizzy, it is time to take stock and make some changes.