Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of TimePeace: Making peace with time – and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. I help busy professionals and entrepreneurs create effective systems so that they can comfortably delegate to others, be more profitable and have time to enjoy life even if they don’t have time to learn new technology or train their staff. I have a knack for taking big ideas and converting them into smart, sound, and actionable ideas.
At the end of the day, I transform the way you run your business into a business you love to run.
Today’s comment came from a busy professional and an entrepreneur:
How to manage starting a business with your husband or significant other?
Like many advice against going into business with your friends, I’m sure they advise against going into business your husband. Too late, I already did! We started our own Vermont Maple Syrup product line in Florida where we live and we hope to expand in the south. While I love him very much, it can be difficult to leave our work at work at the end of the day. How do you manage a work / life balance when your work and personal life overlap so often?
Don’t Fight It
It’s difficult to “not talk” about what you are passionate about – with your best friend. You’ve started your own business because you love what you are doing, and you are doing it with someone you love. Therefore, my recommendation isn’t to fight the desire to talk about things you love. Unlike a regular “work-day” – your work is tied to your passion.
One recommendation is to forget about leaving work at work — instead block off quality “non-work” time. By this I mean, agree not to talk about work at certain personal times and locations.
For instance (pick one or more):
- In the bedroom
- At the dinner table when eating with the family
- When you are at your children’s events
Balanced Work/Life doesn’t mean Separate Work and Life
A balance work/life strategy doesn’t mean separating work from your personal life. Work (whether we like it or not) is part of our everyday life. To treat is as something separate from our daily lives is not beneficial. The core concept behind “work/life balance” is just being fully in the moment at any given time. When you are focused on your work – stay focused on your work. When you are focused on your family – stay focused on your family. When you are focused on your community service – stay focused on those things.
Start blocking out time in your calendar for the imperatives in your life. If it’s important to you, it should be on your calendar with a date/time and time length on it. This way, your imperatives will not be overlooked by the everyday trivia.
Isolating specific events that you deliberately want to focus on something other than work – will allow you to keep your work/life balance strategy while still being enthusiastic about your life choices.
When you are at your children’s dance recital – you want to be fully in that moment and taking in your children’s talent and growth. When you are sharing important topics with your loved ones at the dinner table – you want to be fully in that moment. When the children are at the table, you want to focus on their stories. When it’s just you and your partner – who is to say that sharing news about the projects you are most passionate about don’t belong as part of those moments?
Have an agreed strategy
Talk with your partner and agree upon when/where you will “not talk shop”. You will find that there will be more opportunities to talk about work in your personal life than you originally thought. Just make sure it doesn’t interview with the other important moments in your lives.
If you need additional help on this topic, please contact [email protected]
Photo by John Schnorbich on Unsplash
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