Review Your Work-Life Balance Strategies on a Regular Basis

Building an online business can be a bit of a balancing act.

Whether you work from home or from the local coffee shop, you still have to fit the rest of your life into your schedule.

We all only have 24 hours in a day and everyone has to sleep and eat, along with a lot of other things to get done.

You have to create some work-life balance strategies for yourself.

Just because you now work for yourself and can control your own schedule, doesn’t mean that you will automatically know what’s going to work best when trying to both live your life and work your business.

In fact, you may find that you are actually working MORE now than when someone else dictated your schedule for you.

This doesn’t always feel like a bad thing at first because you probably enjoy doing your own thing.

Work no longer feels like work and therefore you are less likely to watch the clock like you did when you worked for someone else.

The problem is…if you neglect the rest of your life while building your online business…you will find one or both starting to fall apart.

Make a Plan

So, it’s best to make a plan on how you are going to allocate your time.

This plan does not have to be set in stone, but you should at least have a plan.

You should revisit your plan on a regular basis.

Why?

Well, as you organize your work and life schedule for balance, you’ll eventually get to a point where you’re happy with your work-life balance strategies.

However, in a few weeks or a few months, your work-life balance strategy might not feel as good as it used to.

Instead of everything feeling balanced, you may start to feel stressed out again.

You’ll wonder where you went wrong, after getting your life all sorted out.

The truth is, work-life balance productivity needs to be reassessed every now and again as your life and business progress.

Things can change pretty quickly in life and in online business, so some work-life strategies might work for one month and then might be totally off after you take on a new responsibility in your online business or at home.

Reevaluate Work-Life Balance Strategies

By re-evaluating your work-life balance techniques regularly, you can avoid stress when the balance is off.

Whenever you get your life balanced out, it’s only going to be temporary until something new comes along and you make your required adjustments.

For example, you might have your balance figured out, but then you and your spouse are going to be having a baby or someone else in the family needs more of your time or attention.

The responsibilities that this will require are going to be substantial, and obviously, it won’t just work naturally to your current work-life schedule.

Readjust

Instead, you’ll need to readjust and make room for these new responsibilities or changes.

However, don’t assume it just has to be reevaluated after just major events or big changes.

It could be that you felt great working during a certain time of the day or even late into the night and maybe your physical health has changed and now you are more tired than you used to be, during times you had felt more energized.

It could be that maybe you need to tweak your schedule more to allow for more exercise or even a nap or two.

It’s so easy to ignore your body’s physical needs when you are laser-focused on your online business.

I have been guilty of letting my day or night get away from me and then realizing that I have not eaten or stayed hydrated or neglected to get up and move around enough.

Getting up regularly is something that I have to do because of my back and neck issues.

I know this, but I still catch myself neglecting myself.

It helps that my elderly cats let me know that it’s time to get up if I get too distracted. It’s like they have built-in alarm clocks when it’s time for their meals.

Yeah, it’s not because they are looking out for me…lol. It’s all about them and their needs.

This is actually a good thing though because they are persistent and I have no choice but to get up and take care of them.

Remember You Are in Control

The silly thing is…all of this is in my control and I don’t even have to ask my supervisor if I can get up and move around.

In fact, when I used to work in call centers…there was really no flexibility at all.

You are basically stuck at your desk until your assigned breaks when you work in those places.

Now from home, I can do whatever I want, but if I’m not paying attention…I still find myself out of balance with my life, health, and work.

Actually, this is something I have to address often because my physical needs vary from day to day sometimes, depending on how I feel.

So, my work-life balance and my schedule are something that I tweak as needed, on a very frequent basis, because of my individual health issues.

Consequences of No Work-Life Balance

I have paid the consequences many times for not having a good time management plan in place to help balance my work and the rest of my life.

Some days I end up working too many hours and then I end up not being able to do much for a day or two because I overdid it.

There are some days that I cannot be in front of a computer at all and so I have to anticipate that there will be some unproductive days.

This is why I love online affiliate marketing and promoting things with recurring income.

So, my work is still working for me, whether I’m in front of my computer screen or not.

Lately, I have been working nights more often, which is my natural rhythm anyway because I’m a night owl and always have been.

I’ve been reserving the daytime hours more for self-care and other personal responsibilities.

So, I don’t really do much work now, until I have taken care of myself first.

I’ve had to get stricter lately with myself and keep myself more focused on time management.

Your situation is specifically unique to you as well and so you can set a regular schedule, like once a month or so, and then adjust your balance accordingly.

They might not be huge adjustments every time, but it’s better to slowly correct them.

By doing this consistently and only having to correct minor things each time.

This way you avoid the process of having to totally flip your life around if unexpected things happen or things get complicated.

Additionally, you avoid the stress that might be caused by having your life totally out of balance.

Be Flexible

You should be ready and open to changing your work-life balance as needed.

Life isn’t as consistent and predictable as many would like it to be.

Instead, it has unexpected twists and turns that can set you back, as well as minor course corrections along the way.

There may even be times when you adjust your balance because of the way things in your life evolve.

For example, you might spend a lot of time with your child when they’re a kid, but once they’re a teenager, they might want more time to themselves.

No matter the reason, these changes are often simple if done sooner rather than later.

If you prolong the process and let your life get more and more skewed in one direction or another, it’s going to be harder on you.

This doesn’t even have to be complicated. Remember, YOU are the one calling the shots now and you can do whatever you want.

You Make the Rules

That is the beauty and the benefit of working for yourself doing affiliate marketing or whatever online business you are building.

The whole point of being an online entrepreneur is to NOT have to ask an employer for permission to have a life along with your job.

Take it from me, employers do not care what is going on in your life and how it may affect you.

They just want you to show up when you are told and do your job.

Work-life balance doesn’t mean anything to most employers.

So, now that you don’t have to ask permission to schedule your work and your life, you can decide what work-life balance strategies are going to work best for you.

Just be sure to have a time management plan and review that plan on a regular basis.