These days, it’s almost impossible to separate your working life from your personal life and maintain a healthy work life balance. Work consumes so much of our life that many of us don’t even realize how insidious the far-reaching effects of this situation can be.
If the spouse asks how the day went, again we regale them with the gossip and unfairness at the workplace. It just never ends.
It’s no wonder so many people are stressed out and can’t find any respite from the daily work concerns. Let’s look at a few ways you can mitigate this problem and bring about work and life balance in your life.
This applies to 2 areas: your workload and your stress.
If you can’t complete your work while you’re at work, there may be productivity issues that you need to address. Or maybe your workload is just too much to handle.
If you’re an entrepreneur who works from home, it’s even more important that you set fixed working hours and rest hours or the two will merge and you’ll find that you just can’t switch off.
When it comes to work stresses, try not to bring back work problems and tell your spouse about them. You’ll just be worked up all over again and might even end up having an argument.
Block off all work commitments, stories, stresses, etc. once you leave work.
Procrastination will only stress you out later on when the work starts piling up. It’s the enemy of success and you’ll have thoughts at the back of your mind about your workload piling up.
You do not want to be in a situation where you need to bring work home to complete just because you were putting them till a later date.
The bedroom is only for sleeping and/or sex. That’s it. Doing paperwork, reading statistics, etc. on the bed is poor sleep hygiene.
Your sleep patterns may be interrupted because your mind can’t tell if your bedroom is a place of rest or for work.
It’s these little things that make a world of difference when it comes to drawing a line between your work and home life.
If you work a day job, learn to say no when colleagues try to pass off some of their workload on to you. If you’re free, you may help out.
But if you’re already tearing your hair out because of your own impending deadlines, now is not the time to do favors.
You’ll have to set boundaries with colleagues too, if you wish to preserve your sanity.
Routines are great whether you have a day job or work at home. Waking up at a fixed time, starting work at the same time and leaving work at the same time will lend structure to your day.
Watch your time and energy closely. By demarcating your working life and personal life, you’ll be able to get the best of both worlds without being off-balance.
Trying to maintain balance in your life can be an arduous task if you’re not employing the right strategies.
This situation of being behind the 8-ball daily can take an emotional and mental toll on you, if you let it. The good news is that you can run your day effectively by adopting a few tips and applying them daily.
You absolutely MUST have a plan. It doesn’t matter if you have a day job or you’re working from home. A plan is crucial… and it’s even more important if you’re self-employed.
Not having a plan is akin to sitting down at a restaurant and discovering there’s no menu. What will you do? What will you order? It’s just confusion.
Like Dale Carnegie said, “An hour of planning will save you 10 hours of doing.”
And it all starts by planning tomorrow today. Decide what tasks need to be done. Usually, it’s best to list 3 tasks that MUST be focused on FIRST. These are usually the most urgent/important tasks and need your full attention.
Get them done ASAP. Everything else can come after that.
Write down your plan on paper or you could have it on your computer… and stick to the plan.
If you have a day job, then it’s understood that you’re stuck at your desk from the time you start work till you clock off. However, if you work from home, you have more freedom to structure your workday.
There’s no right or wrong answer here because we’re all different. What you need to do is decide if you’ll work for 2 hours or so and take a 2-hour break to do your household chores… and return later to work again for another 2-hour stretch.
While the duration you choose to work doesn’t matter, the way you choose to do it matters. If you’re working in intermittent blocks, you’ll need to plan your schedule carefully. When will your working hours be and when will you take breaks?
Write it all down so that you can stick to the plan. Do NOT approach this haphazardly or else time will slip through your fingers and you won’t know where the day went.
When planning your day, try not to take on more than you can handle. List the 3 of the most important tasks, 3 less important tasks and 3 maintenance tasks.
The maintenance tasks could be household chores such as cooking or laundry. The truth of the matter is that you’ll never have enough time to do ALL that you want to do.
So, it’s best to focus on what truly matters.
Do make time for yourself to relax and have fun. Don’t spend 14 hours a day working just to reach a lofty goal in future. You just may end up sacrificing your happiness, social life, marriage, etc. only to discover that once you reach your goal, all you’ll have is your goal and nothing else.
Life is about balance and living in the now. So, take time to enjoy it and don’t be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.
Apply these tips and take control of your day. It can be done if you plan it well and plan it in advance.
“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and maintaining a healthy work life balance is a small part of that. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Every single one of us can waste time either intentionally or not, but when it comes to building a successful business, often it’s far more of a subtle beast that we need to conquer: it’s our own fears.
When you’re dealing with self-doubt, everything feels a lot more difficult than it is. We find a million reasons not to get something done because internally we’re constantly sabotaging ourselves believe it’ll likely fail, so why bother?
Procrastination is a business killer. It’s also a dream killer because if you’re allowing negative thoughts and self-doubt to lead the way, you’ll never have enough faith in your abilities to see things through. You’ll not only take longer to get ahead, but chances are you’ll never reach your desired destination.
Procrastination has been called the closest ally to underachievement, and for good reason.
Many of us are afflicted by negative, self-doubt so if that’s you, know that you’re not alone. Feeling like we’re not good enough, or that any success we’ve experienced was somehow unworthy is a common struggle with entrepreneurs all over the world.
The “I’m not good enough” monster is only amplified when you see others in your industry succeed. You might wonder whether you know enough, are informed, skilled or equipped enough to be in a position of authority.
If you’re a coach or course instructor, it’s easy to feel as though you’re simply not knowledgeable or experienced enough to be charging people for your information.
Deep down, you know it’s not true. You’ve likely worked hard to get to where you are and deserve every bit of success you achieve. Overcoming those feels will take personal will and determination, but if you make the commitment to yourself and your business, and you persevere, nothing will stop you from reaching those goals.
Don’t be your own worst enemy in business. Be careful not to sabotage your own efforts. Identify your weaknesses and move on to focus on your strengths.
No, it won’t always be easy and it’ll take a determined effort on your part, but if you work towards reprogramming your way of thinking, you’ll vanquish those success-constricting messages and reinvigorate that desire that made you take the leap from employee to self-employed in the first place.
You got this!
You now understand the effectiveness of chunking (read the article here) and that by implementing this into your workweek you’ll get more done in less time, but we need to dig a little deeper.
Your work environment is just as important as your workflow. You should do everything possible to separate your personal life from your work life, which means talking with friends and family who may feel that just because you now work from home, you’re free for conversations throughout the day.
Create a routine for yourself and try to stick with it. If you can create a realistic work schedule that everyone in your life understands, you’ll be able to minimize distractions while making each hour count.
Doing this will also help you avoid burn out. You can only go full-speed ahead for so long before you’ll suffer the consequences including a dried up creative well.
Pushing forward without breaks or any sort of normal schedule will also leave you scrambling to fix errors, revise projects and will cause you to overlook important tasks.
As for your office environment itself, it all depends on what helps you to stay focused. For some, they find that music helps them focus while others need it to be completely silent.
Do your best to figure out what kind of routine will get you into a working mindset.
Does working out in the morning help?
Do you have to shut off your phone, close your email, or fire up a playlist in order to spring into action?
Find your groove and stick with it.
Your family, your mental health, and your career will thank you for it.
Hopefully you already have ideas as to how to create an organized system that will boost productivity and help you place a value on your time. If not, make that your top priority.
And your second?
Hold yourself accountable when you mess up.
If you’re struggling to get things done, it’s easy to switch up your routine believing that will help you get back on track.
However, if you take the time to analyze why you really fell behind in the first place, chances are you’ll be able to identify where things went wrong and it’s not always deserving of a new routine.
Take a step back and think about where and when your efforts were derailed.
Were you spending too much time in email or on social media?
Did you fail at prioritizing your goals and ended up spending too much time on things that don’t matter as much?
Self-correcting and holding yourself accountable are two very important lessons when it comes to being successful in your business.
It’s way too easy to say, “just one more hour”, or to push through and get that “one more thing done”, but it does you no good if you end up having to revise that work because you were so burned out that you didn’t give your very best. Your business deserves the best of you and so do your clients or customers.
Holding yourself accountable isn’t always easy, but it’s the enemy of procrastination. If you take the time to identify where you went wrong, you’ll stay clear of self-doubt by immediately correcting the issue and moving on.
And remember, one way to stay productive is to be focused and many people struggle with this. If you want to learn more about staying focused, check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊
In a previous article we looked at communication, adaptability, strategic thinking as ways to become an effective leader.
Now we’re going to add a couple more powerful leadership strategies, namely team building and delegation.
The thought of leading may make people shudder with fear but learning these skills will give you the confidence to be bold and take the reins and become the leader that you were born to be.
We’ll always reach a higher level of success with a team. Even the self-made millionaires and billionaires out there didn’t do it entirely on their own. Bill Gates is a great example. Yes, he had a great idea when he created Windows – but he had a talented team of programmers, designers, writers, marketers, and administrators to help him launch it.
In this chapter, we’ll talk about why team-building is an essential leadership skill, and how you can recognize the areas where you need help so you can build a powerhouse team of your own.
The Benefits of Building a Strong Team
As hard as you may work and as determined as you may be, you can’t do everything on your own, nor should you. It’s not practical, and it’s not working smarter – it’s working harder.
Consider the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” You might be great at some things, but chances are there are areas in your business that would benefit from outside support.
Choosing a team means that you’ll have ongoing support within your own customized network. You can delegate tasks – something we’ll talk about later – and have time to do the things you do best. You’ll also be able to enjoy other aspects of life because, let’s face it, you’ll work better if you make time to play, too.
The trick, of course, is building the right team.
Tips for Attracting Team Members and Knowing When You Need Help
You need a team, but where you do you start?
The first step is identifying the key areas where you need help. If you’re building a business, you’ll need to build a brand, create products, design your website, structure mailing lists, attract new clients, service those clients, and so on.
Start by looking at the things you do very well. Maybe you’re a killer salesperson or a master communicator. Those may be things you can do on your own.
Next, look at the things that aren’t in your wheelhouse. Maybe you have very little marketing experience or you’re not great at organization.
The first team members you hire should be the people who can help you with your weaknesses. You’ll have the best chance of success if you use this method.
The next thing you need to do is attract the right team members.
To do that, you’ll need to:
It’s also a good idea to impose a probation period on any new hires. That way, you’ll be able to make changes easily if you need to. Just make sure to put everything in writing.
Next, we’ll talk about delegation.
In some ways, delegation is the most important skill of them all. I’ve already touched on some reasons why it’s important not to try to do everything yourself. The key to making that happen is to learn how to delegate effectively.
In this chapter, we’ll talk about why delegation is important and provide some tips to help you delegate the right tasks to the right people.
Why You Shouldn’t Try to Do Everything Yourself
If you want to be a great leader, you need to know how to delegate tasks and – just as importantly – who to delegate them to.
We all need down time – and we all do our best work when we’re focused on what we’re good at and love to do. Delegation allows you to focus your time and energy on the things you’re best it and the things that only you can do.
That means you’ll have more time to lead because you won’t be burned out from trying to do everything.
Tips to Help You Decide What to Delegate to Others
The trick to great delegation is knowing two things:
So, let’s take each of these things in turn, starting with knowing which tasks to delegate. You should delegate:
It might be useful to start by identifying the things that only you can do. These may include making strategic decisions about your team or meeting with investors.
Then, make a list of the things you can delegate. Once you’ve got the list, it’s time to think about who the best people are for those jobs. Here are some questions to ask:
Any of these questions can help you identify people who are ready to handle the tasks and responsibilities you’ve identified.
Once you’ve identified the people you need, you should spend some time thinking about the training and support they’ll need to succeed with their delegated tasks. You may need to spend some one-on-one time with them or pay someone else to train them. They may need an outside class or seminar.
Delegate the tasks, and make sure that you communicate clearly and in detail about what you expect from each team member.
Make yourself available to answer questions, and most importantly, keep in mind that they may not get it right on the first try.
You’ll need all your leadership skills to decide what to delegate, choose the best people for each job, and guide them along the way to success. That’s why I saved delegation for last – because it’s a skill that necessarily incorporates all the others we’ve discussed.
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and becoming a successful leader is a small part of this. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Everyone has had the experience of working for a not-so-great boss. While it’s common for people to be promoted into management when they excel in non-leadership positions, the truth is that a lot of the people who get those promotions don’t have the skills they need to effectively manage their team.
In other words, they lack the must-have leadership skills that all great bosses have in common.
These critical steps include: communication, adaptability, strategic thinking, team building and delegation and we’ll look at the first three in this article.
Are you ready to learn what it takes to become an effective leader and put these leadership strategies into practice? Let’s get started!
Without proper, clear and concise communication, you can’t hope to become an effective leader.
Communication is your best tool for explaining your ideas, setting expectations, and building your team. In this chapter, we’ll talk about why strong communication skills are essential for leaders and share some tips about how to communicate effectively both in writing and in person.
The Importance of Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal communication is what builds relationships. If you listen to employees complain about their bosses and employers, one of the top issues they’re dealing with is usually lack of a direct and clear channel of communication.
Effective communication:
Any time you touch base with your team or with a client, you’re using communication skills. That means every phone call, every meeting, every chat, and every email reflects your ability to communicate and keep a pulse on how projects are going.
Tips for Effective Communication in Writing and Off the Cuff
What makes for effective communication? The hallmarks of a good communication are clarity, detail, and honesty.
Clarity means that you must be able to articulate what you want in a way that the person you’re talking to can understand. You’re not communicating effectively if the listener or reader can’t understand what you need or expect from them.
Honesty means that you must be truthful when communicating with your team. That doesn’t mean you need to tell them everything you’re thinking all the time, but it does mean that you cannot mislead them or deliberately omit information that might help them achieve the goals you’ve laid out for the team.
Here are a few tips for communicating effectively:
These tips will help you be an effective communicator and enhance your ability to lead.
Coming up next, we’ll talk about why you must be adaptable if you want to become a great leader.
You’ve heard about survival of the fittest. It’s the principle that tells us that only those who can handle change and cope with adversity survive. In other words, adaptability is necessary – and it can mean the difference between success and failure in your business.
In this section, we’ll talk about why great leaders must be adaptable, and provide some tips about how you can increase your adaptability and learn to go with the flow.
How Adaptability Can Help You Succeed
In our professional lives, things seldom go the way we want them to. There are too many variables for that to always be the case and often, the things that derail our career or our personal lives feels as though it’s out of our control.
The bottom line is that what you do in the face of adversity is what’ll determine whether you’re able to quickly recover, reset and get back on the path to success.
If you have a setback, do you get up and keep going – or do you give up and move onto something else?
Great leaders learn to go with the flow. They understand that success doesn’t happen overnight. Their adaptability helps them get through failure and come out the other side a winner.
Tips for Increasing Adaptability and Going with the Flow
Some people have a high level of adaptability naturally. If that’s you, then you’re probably in good shape.
But what if it’s not? What if you’re easily discouraged or daunted by setbacks? Is there anything you can do to increase your adaptability?
Yes!
Here are some tips to help you increase your adaptability and go with the flow.
Coming up next, we’ll talk about how to build a team – something that’s very important for every leader. Keep reading to learn more!
Strategy thinking is an essential element of leadership. In this chapter, I’ll explain why and give you some tips for improving your strategic thinking and planning skills.
The Role of Strategy in Success
Strategy is simply long-term planning with a fancy name. You have a goal in mind and then you map out a step-by-step plan to achieve it. If you want it to work, your strategy must be logical and practical. Each step you take should build to the next step.
The thing about strategy is that it’s not just for you. Having a strategy in place can help you get investors to fund your company, and it can also help you inspire your team.
Tips for Improving Your Strategic Thinking and Planning Ahead
Some people have a natural gift for strategic thinking. They’re the people who are great chess players and who naturally seem to see everything 10 steps ahead.
If you’re not one of them, don’t worry. Here are some tips to help you improve your strategic thinking.
The more you practice strategic thinking, the easier it will be.
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and becoming a successful leader is a small part of this. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Think back to the last time you had a surge of motivation. Try to remember how it made you feel. What was going through your mind then? If you can’t remember, that’s okay. Just be ready for it when it happens again. If you do remember or find it’s happening again, considering recording your thought processes in a journal.
Sometimes, when you can jar your memory on how you got motivated or stayed motivated, you can reproduce that again. If you record your feelings and actions in a journal, you can simply refer to the journal anytime you need to get that back.
Consider using an actual paper journal rather than recording online. Documents tend to get lost online, and people often forget. With a physical journal in front of you, it will show itself at every moment.
This way when you need that push, you can simply open up the journal and start reading. However, if you feel that you can make it work with an online journal, go for it.
You can also record motivational tips from others into your journal that you find. This gives you more to draw from when you have a need to motivate. Sometimes, these tips can happen in the strangest places, so make sure you have a way of capturing if you don’t have your journal with you for some reason.
Another benefit to keeping a journal about your motivations is you could eventually turn it into a book and sell it. Self-help and motivation is a huge topic for both eBooks and courses.
Also, the fact that you are drawing from true situations that you experience will go a long way when producing your book. People love true stories about motivation.
Don’t worry about what you write in your journal. The key is to keep consistent with it. If you write something that doesn’t make sense or is silly, either disregard it or remove it from your journal.
When you find a job, you try to do your best work for your employer. Assuming you work for a decent company, they will recognize you for performing well. If you’re lucky, you may even get a raise and a promotion. If you are good at your job, why don’t you start working for yourself and reap the rewards?
People who start their own business often find they are less motivated when the rubber meets the road. In theory, it sounds great to be your own boss. But, the reality sets in, and you now have to handle every aspect of your business. This is something you didn’t have to do when working for someone else.
It’s much easier to do what others say than it is to motivate yourself to run your business. First, we are not born with business acumen. We need to learn how to run a business, and we need to find people willing to pay us for our products and services. Even when we do learn these crucial concepts, there’s no guarantee that we’ll succeed with them.
The manager or boss took responsibility to know what needs to get done and hands out assignments accordingly. The manager is also taking on problems that you may run into and deals with other outside entities, so you don’t have to.
When you run things for yourself, you have none of those working for you. It’s all incumbent upon you to take care of everything. Even if you hire others, you are now the boss. There is no longer any buffer. You are it.
Hiring people can still be a great way to take some of the responsibilities off of your plate. For instance, if you don’t have time to bring in new business, hire a good salesperson or team. Pay them well and let them take on this task.
If you can’t deal with billing, hire someone for this task as well. There are third-party services that you can use, so you don’t have to increase your staff count.
This is not meant to discourage you from branching out on your own. You just have to be aware that it’s a whole different arrangement than when you worked for someone else.
The news is always harping on about tax breaks or other incentives given to businesses to attract or keep them in a town, state or country.
These stories often present the dark side of incentives. It shows the evil giant corporation taking advantage of the state incentives. There is some truth to this, but without those incentives, those businesses will look elsewhere.
These businesses often get criticized for not being good corporate citizens in the areas where they get the incentives. They use up the resources of the community while giving little or nothing back.
The idea behind incentives is certainly a good one. Encourage businesses to build or update the business in exchange for tax breaks, tax credits, or some other benefit. This does motivate businesses to come or stay in that area. But, it is often a one-sided deal with the business driving the process. When this happens, the business gets to dictate the terms. This is why hiring tends to be less than they promised and community development from the business falls by the wayside.
Governments also like to save corporations when they get into trouble. Essentially, they throw money at the company in the hope that it will somehow magically start being profitable again. Money doesn’t help bad companies. It only prolongs the inevitable.
Some may argue that even if companies don’t hire the number of people they promised, at least they are hiring. There is some truth to this, but it’s at a cost to the taxpayer. Are the fewer number of employees going to generate enough economic benefit to make the incentives worthwhile?
It’s clear that businesses will be motivated to find the best incentives to set up shop. On the surface, it seems like it makes sense. However, what typically transpires is that it never works as well for the community as it was supposed to.
In the 1980’s, several Japanese companies set up business in the United States. Many of them refused to take the tax incentives at the time. They felt that the community needed the money and that the company is a member of the community.
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
