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Although work-life balance has been a staple of public opinion since the 1970s, entrepreneurs still find it difficult to understand how to balance building their business while still taking time to enjoy their lives.
Over the past decade of my entrepreneurial journey, I have learned that the same skills that led to my business success have also helped me achieve that elusive balance in my life.
That’s why I come to you with an unusual suggestion. Instead of shutting down your entrepreneurial drive to achieve balance, kick it up to full speed. Here are four items I use daily to maintain balance.
Related: 6 Secrets Smart Leaders Use to Achieve Work-Life Balance
Analyze opportunity costs and trade-offs
Instead of thinking of “equilibrium” as “all things are equal and excellent,” analyze the opportunity cost of the activities you engage in. Then determine the compromises you’re willing to make, just as you would in your business.
As entrepreneurs, we know that everything has its price. The essence of good compromise for the benefit of your work-life balance is taking the time to analyze the opportunity costs of how you spend your time, resources, money and energy in all areas of your life.
As an entrepreneur who runs multiple businesses, I actively make decisions about the things I’m willing to give up in order to honor what I care about most. Of course these decisions can change, but I make the decisions without outside forces making them for me.
A compromise I recently made was reducing my relationship with social media. Since one of my companies is a marketing communications agency, this could be seen as a poor compromise since social media is an important tool for customer marketing. I realized that as a consumer (rather than an executive, influencer, or producer) I was spending too much time on social media. This reduced the time I could have spent on other activities that are more important to me.
I value my time and prioritize compromises that give me more time. In my pursuit of work-life balance, time has become a core value for me, but it might be different for you.
Spin like your life depends on it – because it does
When we don’t achieve the ideal work-life balance, we may feel stuck or even slip into the “it is what it is” mentality. But if there’s one thing we know from entrepreneurship, it’s the ability to reorient ourselves to see the growth we need.
Pivoting allows you to correct course while maintaining enough familiarity to avoid cognitive overload or biting off more than you can chew.
In my world, the need to change is entirely driven by problems, challenges, or discomfort. I like to say, “Discomfort is data” – and data, as you know, is a powerful tool.
If you feel discomfort in your pursuit of work-life balance, it means something has risen in your awareness and you can recognize that needs are changing. The power lies in working around this discomfort and experimenting with temporary or long-term solutions.
For example, I implemented this tool to address one source of my discomfort: my morning routine. My solution was to pivot and experiment. I kept some things the same, including my wake-up time, but I wanted to change almost everything else. I started pivoting to see what worked for me and what didn’t. First I paired activities. Then I decoupled some activities. I also removed some activities and changed others.
Most importantly, ask yourself: Where am I experiencing discomfort on my journey to work-life balance and what is an approach I can change today to improve it?
Related: 4 Business Practices That Will Improve Your Personal Life Too
Create a balance sheet plan
Think back to when you started your business – what was the one thing everyone and their mom told you to start doing? A business plan!
Your pursuit of work-life balance is no different. Do you have a “balance plan”?
Just as you would take time to strategically plan your business, do the same for your personal life. Maybe you have non-negotiables that you do daily to help balance. Maybe your balance sheet plan is more of a guide for how you deal with certain things.
For example, are there “calendar rules” for when you are online or offline at work? Do you have specific personal goals that you pursue and report on with an accountability partner, just as you do with your professional goals? I do all of these things and each of them contributes to my work-life balance.
In addition, part of my balance plan includes regular strategic planning around work-life balance with annual, quarterly and weekly goals. I even keep a spreadsheet with all my goals together.
Because I am the person at the center of my business, it is important to me that I value my work both personally and professionally.
Before your next work-life balance pivot, take 30-60 minutes and think about a balance plan. First, ask yourself: What should my work-life balance look and feel like?
Perform a plus/delta or post-mortem review
Once you have completed a launch in your organization, the best way to improve your success, mitigate future problems, and plan for the next launch is to conduct a project post-mortem, perform a plus/delta analysis, or perform a performance review.
But analysis and measurement shouldn’t just be reserved for business operations. This same strategy can be applied outside of your organization to align your daily actions with your vision for how you should live your life.
Analyze your work-life balance efforts at the same or similar pace as your business efforts.
In my life, I have adopted the “12 Week Year” methodology for strategic planning. Each week I take a quick look at how well I’ve accomplished my goals and use that information to plan for the next week. At the end of the 12 weeks I analyze the entire process. As I pursue my personal goals alongside my professional goals, I see balance because in my strategic planning pages I have linked all the elements of my life together the way they are in real life.
Related: 10 Leaders Who Model Good Work-Life Balance
Let’s be honest. Growing up is hard, and when you consider the additional challenges that come with entrepreneurship, keeping all the plates spinning can feel like an insurmountable effort. The truth is that entrepreneurship is all about taking responsibility and accountability for your success, but that feeling of responsibility and accountability doesn’t end when you close your laptop and switch from professional mode to personal mode.
Whether it’s applying strategic planning to your personal life and creating a balancing plan, making compromises, experimenting with areas of focus on specific topics, or conducting regular post-mortems of your balancing act, these are all tools in your arsenal. They’ve been proven effective in business empires, so now it’s time to apply them to You, Inc. and see what great growth you can achieve.